Posts by Number6

That makes it a conflict of interest then. The people who could advise you to update your SIM (or just provide one) are the people who potentially gain the most from you not upgrading.

Clara wiped the slate clean in her guest appearance before becoming the regular companion. They all forgot about him so he gets to do it all again.

Re: +1 for dodgy electrical wiring.

Could be interesting, sticking your ear on a live fuse board.

Real fuses or BA[*] fuses?

[*] or Chinese equivalent

Re: Definition/Measurement

While it is possible to calculate another triple point, I suspect that relating it to the water measurement would involve use of Boltzmann's constant. Therefore they do need to know the constant's value before it's worth doing the rest.

Sky considers that with the progress made to date by BT, and experience gained by all CPs in the roll-out of BT’s FTTC, it is appropriate to reconsider access products unbundled to a greater extent than the current GEA product

This translates to:

"We didn't want to share the costs of installation but now that BT have spent all the money, we reckon we ought to get access on the cheap."

I don't know what the charging model is for all of this and am prepared to accept that there's an argument that BT are padding it a bit, but I can also see BT's side of it.

Expectations

I just worked on the principle that they were going to have a surge of interest and wasn't disappointed. Mine turned up OK in the end and their in-between emails kept me informed so I didn't perceive anything as bad. Reading comments from others, it appears that this wasn't true of everyone. Possibly it depends on how many microseconds after the price-drop announcement elapsed before placing your order.

Re: bone conduction

I doubt if they'd see that as a problem, they'd be able to force the advertising onto everyone nearby, not just those leaning on the window.

More subtle than an axe, a small cordless drill to take out the transducer and the wires that connect it to the rest of the electronics, and a small tube of sealant to plug the hole once it's done.

Re: Errrr...

I want to know how it works at all. I understand a conventional processor, how does the quantum bit come into it? My best guess is that it's using quantum states instead of larger bit-storage mechanisms but how it does that in a stable manner and how the state is then determined is beyond my present understanding, which I'm seeking to extend.

Catnip is a member of the mint family, my cats think it's great.

Re: "...the fashionable North London borough of Islington"

Tony Blair happened. Any criminal with self respect went somewhere else.

At the very least BT ought to offer more CLI than "INTERNATIONAL" with no number attached. They could at least give an international prefix even if they don't provide a full number. Given the prevalence of CLI now, even their "we can't be sure all the privacy flags have correctly propagated" is a bit weak, especially now that we can't even rely on the CLI as being real in the first place.

Isn't a compromise agreement basically a way of extracting money from the company in return for leaving them alone? If they've screwed you, now you've screwed them back so put it behind you and enjoy the rest of your life.

Re: Any rope is the problem

Enter the Heisenberg/Schrödinger elevator.

Isn't that one where you don't know whether the occupants of the lift car are dead or alive until you open the door? Instead of something radioactive in the lift to determine the state, you just need to make sure one of the passengers is prone to flatulence.

Yes, really

It's economics. How many are they going to sell, how much does it cost to do all the up-front work such as proofreading and such like, how much does the author get paid, what's the cost of the print run, distribution, etc.

For non-fiction books they don't expect to sell many, plus they're often big and heavy and so the material cost is higher, as is that for distribution.

Re: Loose talk costs

The only time the agent's interests really align with those of the successful candidate is when it comes to salary negotiations. If the agent is being paid a percentage of the annual salary then he's going to do his best to get you a good salary, which can help if negotiating is not one of your top skills.

Re: Education? Education? Education?

Education != School. Much useful education takes place away from the classroom, where children are free to experiment and do what they want and not be constrained by the National Curriculum or SATs. The main point is that it's cheap enough to be considered 'a component' and breaking one is not a financial catastrophe in the same way that breaking a £500 PC might be. It's easier to get to GPIO than on a big PC too, embedded programming is different to a pure software application because things happen to real hardware outside the PC.

Re: Tobin was right

That would just encourage people not to save. Why put money away if it's going to be worthless in a few years? the British welfare state is bad enough at the moment, where the really well off don't care, the ones at the bottom get some degree of government aid but the ones in the middle who might do something stupid like save a bit for retirement suddenly find that the existence of those savings means they don't qualify for any of the benefits for which they've probably paid a significant amount of taxes over the years. So, if you've got any savings, blow them on a holiday just before you get to retirement, otherwise you'll never see the value of them.

I think if you visibly devalued money every year (as opposed to inflation doing it quietly) then you'd have rebellion.

Re: Are you kidding me?!

"And just who's pipe do you think is being used when they are accessing YOUR modem? The imaginary second one?"

If it's anything like I have with my cable modem here, I pay for 20Mb and the modem is currently provisioned for that, in theory the line supports 50Mb so there's plenty of spare bandwidth. Of course, in an ideal world it would be set up so that the line is configured for 50Mb, I pay for 20Mb guaranteed and have use of the other 30Mb for free if no one else is using it, in return for providing house room for the access point.

Wet

I'm not taking my hat off until the rain stops.

Re: Desktops will never disappear

The danger is that if desktop machines become significantly less popular, the cost will increase and they'll become even less popular compared to tablets, and so on. We'll end up back in the bad old days where companies buy posh, expensive workstations for those who need them and the rest of us will end up with a tablet in a dock, possibly with a keyboard and mouse attached, and perhaps even a second monitor.

I much prefer a keyboard, mouse and monitor to a touch screen with finger marks all over it.

Re: Who had the wheels?

Obviously not counting the spare. Or the steering wheel, or the flywheel...

Re: Beggars belief that TVs & remotes don't use bluetooth

I still have a Ferguson TX 14" portable TX that dates back to about 1983. As far as I know it still works, including the mod board I put in it to make it act as an RGB monitor (before the manufacturer introduced a variant with it built in). I still have the BBC Micro that was used with it too.

Re: darkness

It's cheaper if you can save on the lighting bill. If it's shot in Europe then the EU has probably prohibited them from using anything more thirsty than a 40W bulb.

Re: Thou shalt not ...

It's also not confined to the US, the British Civil Service will happily threaten you to hide their embarrassment as well, and that's independent of who lives at No.10.

Official Secrets Act, anyone?

Re: I think, therefore I scam.

Many years ago when I was a student, I was wheeling my shopping trolley back to my car in the Sainsbury's Car Park in Bath and discovered that it would operate the inbound gate when it ran over the induction loop. I think that in these days of CCTV everywhere you'd probably find someone was watching closely enough to see what you were doing.