Posts by Mayhem

Re: Excoriation of Tony Abbott (video link)

Sir Humphrey: Now, Minister, if you are going to promote women just because they're the best person for the job, you will create a lot of resentment throughout the whole of the Civil Service!

Re: syria so depressing

And despite such a beginning, the US still only delayed the internal struggle for power by less than a century ...

Although funny you should mention crazy religious rulers taking over a country ....

Re: A fascinating read

Well, it has the advantage of being of known bias, so you can apply your own mental corrections.

It also tends to cover things in a bit better detail than the other free UK new sites.

And the occasional howling errors are entertaining.

(I had the same problem with our internet portal being in Italy)

Re: Yet again - science story in bizarre mishmash of units

You fool, the register never uses consistent units!

If it helps, we should be talking costs around the $11500/Jub mark dropping to a mere $0.11/kiloJub

Re: Not just financials.. Oil too

Yes, until you've actually seen an Excel spreadsheet running for multiple simultaneous users and updated in realtime from various internet and Reuters trading feeds ...

You too will say "Excel doesn't do that" and "you can't trust it"

Once you have, you learn very quickly to say "I will need that request in writing before I can look at it"

Controlled by Qatar

But free to say what it likes about anyone else.

That is the key - there is nothing wrong with a vested interest as long as that interest is known - people can then correct for the bias.

And there's nothing the Qatari leaders seem to enjoy more than taking potshots at their arab neighbors, so the journalism of Al Jazeera is surprisingly good and open on everything except Qatar, which frankly is a fairly small inoffensive country.

Re: the repurposing of an airliner...

To be fair, there is a difference between imagining an attack by a passenger jet, and imagining the same attack with a jet full of passengers.

His scenario had the pilot taking off with an empty plane and killing his co-pilot first.

Re: Here's a cost _not_ asssociated with books

Ahh, I can see where you are coming from.

I hadn't read that as a particularly onerous burden to cross for a professional writer or one who wants to be. The list of approved publishers was fairly broad, and includes accredited international publishers in case your work sold better overseas.

I understood their policy was less to ensure that the right publishers get paid as to help make sure people don't go to the wrong ones, especially those vanity presses and scams that require the author to pay up front for their work to be published.

I wasn't aware that e-publishing was not considered acceptable, but you're quite right - a lot of the major e-publishers are specifically deemed not valid. Interesting.

I wonder if the more reputable e-publishers need to consider forming their own trade body, although I'm not sure there are enough good ones worldwide to justify it yet. Certainly that is indeed a gap in the market that needs to be picked up in the next few years.

Re: An extra second?

They must have over compensated for missing '1' in the countdown

Re: simple

Tell that to the M1

Re: I went down the DIY route

Thanks all for mentioning this - I now have one too.

Re: Feature needed...

I think they are less popular because the pass through units are bloody huge - it comes back to the physical size of the UK plug. It's probably also cheaper to just buy a 4way extension lead than pay the price differential.

Re: "even the movies often fail to get the genre right."

Nice troll.

Game of thrones features some walking undead, a couple of eggs that hatch eventually, and a whole lot of men. Not an elf, orc, troll or dwarf in sight, other than normal human mutant Tyrion.

You may not like the series, but please try and at least read the show description next time.

And as for your criticism of Tolkein - you may have missed the part where they had to avoid going through the *very large open gap in the hills* where the main trade route went on the grounds that the big enemy army held the fortress in the middle of it. You may have seen the battle in the second film with the Ents recapturing it, it was fairly prominent.

The second side trip (through the paths of the dead to summon the Deus Ex Machina army) was done because there was indeed no trading between those two realms and hence no other way.

Oh, and as I understand it the oldest English novel is generally considered to be Robinson Crusoe from 1704, though Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur goes back to the fifteenth century.

Re: Atmospheric C02 not directly proportional to emissions

Worse than that - much of the oxygen production on land is consumed by that which produces it - plants release the CO2 at night that hasn't been locked up into cellulose or sugars.

OTOH just one species of oceanic phytoplankton is responsible for around 20% of total oxygen production. And we're working hard at screwing up the environment it lives in. Way to go guys.

Re: What about the cost of upgrading ?

My last job involved support for a bank. Their main banking system ran on an iSeries, and as part of their original software licence agreement, they purchased a copy of the source code, which gave them the ability to make changes outside of the company who produced the product.

While a very large expense some 20 years ago, it turned out to be amazingly valuable last year when the latest owner of the brand IP declared they no longer wanted to support that product, and anyone still on it would be forced to upgrade to the New Shiny product instead, at a minimum cost of several million quid. We were able to turn to our third party developer and say 'are you happy to keep looking after this nice stable reliable system for a fee' and he said 'certainly, cause not being a multinational, it makes for a good living for me'. Win win all round.

Compulsory upgrades are relatively cheap at the desktop level, but when you talk about core business software you *really* want a good support contract.

Enterprise level software on the other hand is a different story entirely ...

Re: The statement "eBooks are cheaper to produce" is *wrong*.

Mostly correct.

But the cost for a reprint or out of print book isn't necessarily much less.

The general process goes along the lines of Find copy of book > Scan it > proof read.

At that point the book is at *exactly* the same point along the chain as a new book.

It needs a new cover design, typesetting, layout, marketing etc. You can't often reuse the cover as frequently the original artwork is no longer available, and you can't just scan in a hi-res image of the cover like you can the text.

Anyone who thinks a book doesn't need an editor, typesetter or proof reader has never tried examining one of the dodgy scans or read through the self-published slushpile.

Books from the last 10 years, will generally have electronic copies lying around and can usually be digitised really easily. Older works however will need the full treatment, which is slow, manually intensive, and costs money that takes a *long* time to recoup on a slow selling backlist item.

And this is of course ignoring the thorny issue of exactly who owns the rights to the book, since older works will be for publishers that no longer exist, that have merged or bankrupted. Orphaned rights are supposed to return to the author, but in many cases they didn't so the book never gets reprinted.

Re: Morale

"The company has a problem. A recent survey showed the morale has dropped from low, which they were okay with, to I’d like to burn this place down…which, frankly, I’m surprised was one of the options."

Re: To bold Lego...

You did well enough the newspapers are stealing the phrase for a headline :)

Re: I smell a BOFH

Well, our dear Simon is from Hobbitsville, so I expect he's trained a fair few apprentices by now...

Re: Re: Correction - firefox on MS's rubbish OS's

And Windows 7 / Server 2008 are notable by their absence from that list, which means that MS definitely made the right changes in separating out user & administrator privileges.

What was more interesting was the targetting of smaller browsers that licence the major engines, so it is a very carefully crafted package.

Sampling every 2 seconds

You've clearly never seen industrial utility meters - they are as granular as possible, some billing down to sub-minute blocks. Presumably the cost to manufacture and install more sophisticated meters has come down enough over time that the extra data supplied will outweigh the costs.

That and the government has decided that Smart Meters are a Good Thing (tm).

I would expect that in a year or two once the meters are well established they will start rolling out variable rate tariffs to domestic customers as well, so probably billing in 15-30min blocks. I would be surprised if they went much shorter than that, the usage usually isn't high enough to justify the extra hassle.

Oh, and one thing people haven't considered - if every house on a street has a smart meter giving constant usage figures, it becomes significantly easier to detect fraud and criminal usage as the flow for a given section of distribution circuitry can be precisely measured.

Ie, they could run a relatively simple calculation on a given segment known for using more power than billed for, and the maths would reveal the loss is happening between #34 & #36, or say the 5th & 6th floors of a larger building.

saw that map...

I preferred the 'I never realised North Korea was so much bigger than South Korea' bit.

Two wheels?

Technically if you only have two wheels, you no longer have a car - you have a bike.

Therefore you wouldn't be competing in the same class.

Erm

You'd be hard pressed finding a 3.5" caddy that doesn't require a separate power supply.

I don't know of many decent 3.5" drives that will happily spin up on 10V 1A of supply, which is all you can draw from two USB sockets.

2.5" drives on the other hand are more or less designed around lower power draw, so happily power themselves off a USB cable. 7200rpm drives often need two ports though to spin up.

And once you start using it outside of cellphone coverage

You start to realise the benefits of a true gps unit in gaining and holding a signal.

Not long back I went hiking for a week in a remote part of NZ, and it was noticeable that while both my nokia E71 and my friends iphone had gps, the E71 was significantly better at picking up and holding a signal, and both were noticeably inferior to the old garmin etrex we were primarily using. Also, prolonged use of the gps system on the phones dramatically shortened battery life, especially compared with using the same devices for city navigation where A-GPS comes in so handy.

All of the devices were horribly inaccurate for altitude readings without barometric altimeters built in, but you kind of expect that.

That being said, the OS map pack does seem somewhat expensive, but I wonder if it is simply a data pack that can be reused in other devices, or if it is customised for the Magellans. If it can be reused, then many people looking to replace an existing gps should be able to transfer over their existing maps which would reduce costs.

Al-Jazeera was brilliant

Posted this yesterday, but still applies.

>>

What I found really fascinating last night was watching Al-Jazeera on the London riots, as compared with Sky News and the BBC.

Sky had the usual talking heads, half of whom regularly demanded the police bring in water cannons, despite being told repeatedly that they are illegal for use on mainland Britain, the nearest available ones are in Northern Ireland or France. Only one person really had a clue, and their reporter was great.

The BBC had one talking head who spent most of the time saying he had no idea what was really happening, he was drowning in information from twitter, eyewitness reports and overhead footage but it was very very hard to find the story amongst the clutter.

Most people phoning in were very much 'disgusted of tunbridge wells' types, more interested in saying how much they hated what was happening than in describing what was happening.

Al-Jazeera had several strategic reporters, all of whom were superb at relaying useful information about their areas. They brought in two different advisors who were deeply familiar with the subject of rioting and uprisings. The most interesting was the observation that it was *only* young people - 14-22yr olds. Unlike many other places, the older people were not involved, and the organised criminal elements were not visibly involved. Which suggested that they were selectively turning over the quieter parts of town while the police were otherwise occupied. The main mass of problems was randomised peer-group oriented destruction. One kid starts, the next follows, and then they're all into it. What was clear was that many of them had no idea what to do with their loot once they had nicked it, there were anecdotes of kids carrying large TVs a half mile or so down the road, then realising that a TV is *heavy* and that they weren't having fun any more, so they'd dump it in a garden, and go back for more mayhem.

Little known fact

New Zealand actually had a reactor up until 1981. A very little one at one of the universities, used for research and training purposes. It also has several large areas of land purchased convenient to the significant cities on (relatively) geologically stable sites, in preparation for when public perceptions change enough to actually allow some form of power generation.

An example is a section reserved adjacent to the Kaipara, because there is a distinct lack of power generation on the northern side of Auckland and this limits the capacity to deliver electricity to the northern parts of the city and Northland. A small nuclear plant located there would provide significant benefits, while still being nicely isolated from anything considered particularly important.

Sam Goldwyn said that?

in two words ... Im. Possible.