Posts by Charles 9 16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
"Rule 64 that says you MUST NOT cycle on the pavement."
This rule would have to depend on the locality because where I live, the rule is that, barring a designated bike path, you MUST cycle on the pavement because the sidewalk is meant for walking. Besides, some places sidewalks don't exist. You stick to the outside so that cars can pass you.
"In most places they fall foul of the "keep aware of your surroundings" rule. It is rarely acted upon by the cops, though I remember that Montreal's city police started dishing out heavy fines to cyclists sporting headgear when I was there a couple years back. I heard a lot of my colleagues bitch about how unfair it was that they were fined as the motorists were a danger to them, not the opposite. Idiots."
It's like that where I am as well. You cannot block both ears when driving or riding because one needs to have aural awareness (in the event of a horn or siren, for example, the source of which may not be immediately visible). I think they let a monaural earpiece slide, though, since one ear was still free.
The thing is, the sprint only occurs over the last, say, 200m. Everything before that is jockeying for position, and getting behind a cyclist to slipstream before pulling away late is a known sprint tactic. So yes, the final part is the actual sprint and is accurate; it's just the leadup that stinks to the audience although to the racers, it's valid headgames.
Whichever side of the road you drive on is considered your "driving hand". The US makes you drive on the right (so is a right-hand) while in the UK you drive on the left (a left-hand). There's no advantage or disadvantage either way and mainly boils down to cultural and practical considerations (how did you do it before cars, where do most of your cars come from, etc.).
The general rules of thumb at an all-stop is (1) first in, first out; (2) if two or more vehicles arrive at once, drivers yield to the one to the side of their driving hand (eg. right in the US, left in the UK), meaning the one with no vehicle to his driving side normally goes first and proceeds in reverse from there; (3) in the event all approaches are filled at the same time, meaning the driving-hand rule has an infinite loop, that's gonna have to be hashed out between the drivers.
Anyway, in this case, the Google car was obviously waxing caution. It just turned out it hit an edge case: someone who didn't exactly follow the driving-hand rule. If I read this correctly, both car and bike arrived at the same time, and the bike was to the right, meaning the car was correctly yielding to the bike. Thing was, the bike didn't move right away, so the car started to move, but stopped when the bike started moving, too. It's sort of a case of ping-ponging hesitation, each flinching when the other moves and then vice versa.
The counter is that only a company like Apple, who has a uniquely sirenesque appeal (Apple's sorta like the Carrot Ironfounsersson of the computing world; you can't help but like the guy even with his strength and other quirks), could pull something like that off. Anyone else, and as Detritus would say, "We look in gutter for our heads..."
...Or was it the 12th sentence on page 97? Oh wait, that's an illustration! Was it the caption on that page. Wait, where's the book?!
THAT's the level of horrible I'm talking about. About the only way many of these types of people survive is by muscle memory, but here even that gets tangled up with all the websites one visits regularly. Plus, in the case of the password safe, the computer may be shared.
Well, that scratches LTE in the US for starters. Band III is locked in by the military, and band IV is the best one there (II and XVII are noted as alternates). Good US multi-band phones can tune into bands I and VII which keep options open abroad (I speak from experience).
PS. This talk of a unibody design smells of one that can't be opened, which means the battery can't be removed. That's gonna be a turn-off right there.
"Hmm. I've had old flip-phones last more than five years. Also, my ancient Samsung Omnia would be able to work today (it turns on...) except that it was a Verizon device and there is no way that I am ever going to go anywhere near Verizon ever again. For one thing, it's still locked to Verizon as Veriscum refuses to unlock phones, even out of contract. (Or at least they refused back when I was a Veriscum victim, they may have changed lately. Doubt it, though. I hate Sprint, but they're not a bad as Verizon.)"
There's a reason for that. Pre-LTE Verizon phones were CDMA which were not interchangeable between carriers (mostly due to design limitations; CDMA phones could only tune in on that carrier's frequencies).
"Anyway did't some legal ruling the US force the carriers into unlocking phones?"
That ruling can only apply to GSM and LTE phones (both of which use SIMs) which are designed around interchangeability. That basically means AT&T, T-Mobile, MetroPCS, (LTE) Verizon phones, and any MVNOs using them as a backhaul. Sprint doesn't count because its pre-LTE phones were CDMA and its LTE phones use TDM (all the others use FDM) which IINM isn't as well supported.
"If you already have thermal power stations, then even after the 2nd or 3rd stage turbines the steam still has heat to help boil off seawater, and as you need to cool the steam off anyway the combined power and water plant can work out cheaper overall than RO."
That's a consideration, yes, and I'm sure power plant designers are keen to extract every last bit of heat out of their boilers (or at least until Diminishing Returns kicks in), but I think this will work only if the power station is close to a source of salt water. Otherwise, the pumping costs will likely tip it below break-even. Plus there's the issue of cleaning up the byproducts over time.
"The nice thing about TSE is that as the city grows, you get more of it. You can see this in action in Oman where the trees along the side of the highways reach further out of town every year."
You would think that your sewage treatment costs would rise along with the population. You'll need to increase your capacity so that you can treat more sewage at a time, and this may also involve additional capital expenditures (more tanks, etc.). How will does TSE scale with population growth?
I don't have any concrete numbers at present, but design considerations alone can present challenges. For example, what is the world's largest greenhouse in terms of floor area and in terms of overall volume (a solar still essentially needs a design similar to a greenhouse, especially on the ceiling)? Second, how well will a batch process with labor-intensive between-batch cleanup (a solar still needs to be periodically cleared of its deposited minerals, which don't just include salt) work against a more-or-less-continuous demand for clean water (not just among farmers, but also among a sprawling metropolis like Los Angeles which basically never sleeps)? Third, just how much sunlight will you need to evaporate X gallons of water? For a frame of reference, near Los Angeles is the world's largest solar-thermal energy plant in the world, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility. It generates 392MW (e or t, no one says) over a span of some 1400+ ha. Sounds like a lot until you realize they say this'll power about 100,000 homes. Los Angeles County alone has over ten million homes according to the 2010 US Census. Oh, and BTW, what about the energy needed to move all this water and waste to and from the desert (and please note, most of California's desert is actually elevated several hundred feet—in comparison Death Valley and the Salton Sea are pretty small areas—which means you'll be pumping seawater uphill)?
They only work during the day when there's sun out, they'll probably interfere with local fauna, and the infrastructure needed to pump the seawater and brine is bound to be prohibitive. Not to mention there's still the issue of what do with the concentrate, which is basically toxic at this point and has to be disposed carefully to prevent ecological issues. And no, you can't dessicate it completely as there's more than salt in that brine.
And oh yeah, there's that BIG big problem...of SCALE. You think solar stills can provide millions of gallons a day to Los Angeles County?
Except some lifeforms rely on the brackish water you get at estuaries (the borderline zone between the river and the ocean), making them some pretty important and pretty sensitive environmental areas. Anyway, you forget the Colorado River, which is already overtapped to the point it usually doesn't make it to the Gulf of California.
"What's really needed is a private non-profit with the technical expertise to do serious computer security research and open source distribution, that would include counter-surveillance technologies."
To pull something like this off, the non-profit would likely have to be a transnational on the level of, say, the Red Cross, to be able to stand up to pressure from state agents. Thing is, the states are the incumbents and would be likely to either nip something like this in the bud or infiltrate and subvert it.
"The only solution is the electorate to make their feelings known to the government in one voice, "If you support mass spying on individuals you will not be reelected."
The politicians will simply respond by removing ANY AND ALL candidates who would be against mass spying so that your only choices are him and someone else who's all for spying. So you're left with the choices of a spymonger, a worse spymonger, or (maybe) going unrepresented, which amounts to the same thing.
Then Android M can't come soon enough, as M is supposed to finally introduce ubiquitous user-controllable permissions.
PS. What's to stop an app balking when it detects you've blocked access to something, along the lines of, "We need this permission to function properly. Please enable the function to continue using this app"?
"It is time to oblige companies to respect the contractual obligations of Commercial Law. If payment is required for a service, then it is a contract. If it is a contract, then one side cannot change the conditions without consent from the other side."
Most contracts contain a "subject to change at any time" clause, sometimes including a "without notice" disclaimer. Since it's part of the contract, it's enforceable unless there is a specific law which forbids the practice (and last I checked, no such law exists). It's like with laws themselves. Laws can be changed to make things illegal and so on. It's just that (in some jurisdictions like the US), the law cannot be retroactive and must only apply to anything going forward.
I guess it boils down to the classic open-source fear of being Borged by a proprietary code that in turn shifts development away from the open code. So the demand is to keep the code as open as possible, and when it comes to key systems like video, the bar is set higher. The only problem is that the two remaining big GPU manufacturers, nVidia and AMD, possess enough oomph that they can push back and answer with "Take It Or Leave It. You need us, we don't need you."
That's also concern for what happens if a company liquidates and no longer exists to support a device that may still be in active use. And open code base at least keeps options open.
"The primary problem with pressurising H2 is metal embrittlement and there's a secondary issue that pressurised Hydrogen has a nasty tendency to simply waft through the walls of most containment vessels due to its tiny molecular size - I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the tank would lose 10-25% of its capacity if left sitting for a week."
And just to demonstrate how difficult the containment situation is, recent advances in hard drives are attempting to hermetically seal hard drives so they can be filled with helium (monatomic noble gas He, weight 4) which is already known for being so tiny it can leak through practically anything (especially balloons). Hydrogen gas, despite being diatomic (H2), its molecular weight is even smaller (just 2), so the problem here is only exacerbated.
And while I can see that hydrogen isn't as likely to react chemically in the event of an accident, there's still that high-pressure tank to consider in a crash. Strong as it may be, it may take the wrong kind of it for it to fail catastrophically, and my imagination has a little trouble visualizing the full impact a 700bar tank about the size of a car boot suddenly bursting within.
"They spend a lot of time doing things that are visible, but don't really help much, so they can be seen as doing "something". But they're afraid to step on toes to effect changes in policy that will truly make a difference, like banning the use of USB sticks that can not only be a vector for infection they can provide an easy conduit for IP theft on a massive scale as well as too often data loss to the outside through carelessness or negligence."
The reason they're afraid to step on toes is they're afraid one of those toes is someone above them who goes, "Who hired this clown?" IT security doesn't do much if the top brass don't see the point, and part of IT's job is making those same top brass see the point.
Over a whole ecosystem, yes diversity is a plus. But within a clan (that is, within one group of a single species), diversity has to play second fiddle to compatibility (as in, the males and females need to be able to breed). Same in the office: diversity in software has to take second place to network communication; otherwise, things can't get done.
But unlike a military, a business needs to be able to, well, do business. At some point, the return on security diminishes because you stifle the business flow. That's why there's a sliding scale of security versus ease of use. Improving one necessarily stifles the other the way a locked door delays you getting into your own house.
Plus one needs to realize that no security measure can be effective even in a practical sense since there's always the threat of the trusted insider turned traitor. I mean, insiders defeated the Great Wall of China.
"Who would work for such a company and why?"
Anyone starving. For many, it's far preferable to be working for Evil, Inc. and put food on the table than to be starving in the streets. There's a self-preservation instinct, you know?
"Going along with the status quo just because there is no alternative, is never going to solve the problems. Is it?"
Sometimes, one has to admit defeat and declare a problem intractable (or at the least, infeasible given the conditions). For example, hoping for a government that cannot be corrupted is considered infeasible given the human condition (the self-preservation instinct inevitably leads to corruption, which can occur in any form of government). So too may the status quo be an infeasible problem if the only alternative is to go without which in so doing leads to serious disadvantages.
So basically, while one can walk away, it's hard to walk away from the only watering hole within line of sight.
For the record, Intel has a spec sheet on the STCK1A32WFC, the higher-end of the ICS's. According to the spec, the CPU is an Atom Z3735F which is one of those with a built-in graphics unit. According to ARK, it's your basic Intel HD Graphics units with a clock range going from 311-646 MHz. According to Kodi, it's enough for H.264 up to 1080p but not H.265.
Because the Pi is ARM-based, which pretty much requires a blob since ARM implementations differ from setup to setup and there's no standardization concerning these setups: most of which are in fact protected as trade secrets. Furthermore, some of the stuff in the Pi's CPU is actually protected by patents which requires licensing.
The Pi tends to be underpowered in media playback last I checked, especially at 1080p and/or H.265, and firsthand experience tells me it tends to hang when trying it for extended periods. The article notes the ICS handles 1080p smoothly (albeit probably using H.264).
It's in the article: $110 for the cheaper 1GB model with Ubuntu, $149 for the more expensive 2GB model with 8.1 Bing. Since it supports USB booting, you're free to change the installed OS within reason. Still, for a media playback device, it sounds tempting...but did anyone try this stick out with the new H.265 standard?
"If boards understood the massive risk they face from IT, they'd insist on Ada now, and throw out all the closed-source rubbish."
Thing is, most boards have to answer to the investors, and many investors these days are quite short-sighted.
"This is a tech NEWS website. If you want to know what is available to buy now, check a retail website like Amazon."
It's just that a lot of these "new technology" announcements turn out to be vapourware, and we get all hyped up over nothing. Much better by far that we hear news of technologies going into actual trials of a decent scale or, even better, preparing for a mass-market rollout, meaning we actually have something to look forward to.
"At my employer for example possession of a mobile phone on an operations floor is an instant sacking offence - they are that concerned about any recording devices, whether audio or visual."
Just for the record, why the paranoia? Top Secret workings, concerns of industrial espionage, or confidentiality issues?
"So did 8086. Code segment, data segment, stack segment, et al. In practice these pointers were often set at the same address, which kind of defeats the point."
In Real Mode, once memory cleared 16 bits, the code and data segments could and frequently did occupy different 64K segments of memory. About the only time the CS and DS were the same was in Tiny (.COM rather than .EXE) compiles meant to fit completely into a single 64K segment.
Protected Mode meant 32-bit programming which meant access of up to 4GB of memory in an age where even 8 and eventually 256MB was considered high. This meant a flat memory model and that deprecated segments.
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