Posts by John Smith 19

"if..going to invest in infrastructure..then while interest rates are low..probably the best time. "

3 little words.

Public Private Partnership.

The UK has had very low interest rates for most of the decade.

And no govt with the balls to actually do what you asked. They have however let companies build schools and hospitals and charge local authorities and the NHS for them

Which will net the companies involved 600-700% profits over the course of the contracts.

Re: Australia Mega Prison

"Australia II" ?

"a man who..can't pass legislation even with control of both houses of congres"

Well TBF it has only been a 152 days since the inauguration.

OTOH it has been 152 days since the inauguration and the Republicans do have control of both Houses.

I thought there was a shed load of laws that need passing or scrapping (from the Republicans PoV) all set to go.

Re: Intel is an ARM licensee...

Don't worry, I'm sure they'll sell that off ASAP.

"Why is it even an option? "

Because sometimes it will be the wrong thing to do?

Because devs are compulsive knob twiddlers?

Because in developing very large programs devs will favor a faster compile "dev version" of the program than the "full safety check" version, and then forget to change the settings for the compile to the release version?

Pick any or all of the above.

Re: I guess a key question is how many of these things there are so how many to update

"I don't know but I *can* use Google 8)"

Bully for you.

So about 700 000 units would need have their software updated, not their routing tables.

Sounds like a fairly major task to me.

"44 C today and tomorrow here in Fresno, CA,""And no, we don't do air conditioning."

This just seems unimaginable without aircon.

I've spent some time in Arizona and the closest I've come to frost bite was the nights in an Arizona motel room.

They seemed to think all visitors like aircon up to 11.

But I think humidity is the biggest PITA. I met someone who worked in Hong Kong. They said that even with aircon they were changing their shirt three times a day. I've often wondered what SF is like. People say it's cold and damp (the old Mark Twain like about "The coldest Winter I spent was Summer in San Francisco," boom boom) , but that's by Californian standards.

"The downloadable spreadsheet indicates the US in 10th (out of 34)"

So not the broradband speed.

Guess that leaves the other options.

"COBOL has been a fossil since 1980 at least and that's over a working lifetime ago."

Supported by the "Programmersaurus Rex"

The "Big Beast" of software development.

"Nothing annoys me more..US military whining that they got owned..stupid embarrassing way"

I think the thing people find very odd about the DoD is this.

Despite being in the habit of invading foreign countries (they seem to have started getting over Viet Nam when they invaded Grenada and have been putting in regular practice ever since) and having one of the words biggest and most technologically advanced armies on the planet they don't seem to absorbed one simple lesson.

Quite a lot of people don't like them.

That, plus the fact they have various assorted kinds of information that could be financially or militarily beneficial for unauthorized outsiders to know, means that they are (to coin a phrase)

"A big f**king target."

Despite this they seem to behave with an attitude to IT security that would embarrass, say McDonalds.

It's 2017 and it seems parts of the DoD still think this is the 1970's.

"Volvo manufacture hybrid trucks and busses that use Li Ion batteries. "

Given the American Mid West can reach those sort of temperatures it seems likely Sweden could as well.

I take your point I'd also expect most places to keep that sort of stuff in a shed, possibly heated but at least insulated.

I'm not so sure about buses. I could see this as being quite handy if you don't have garage parking or if you find yourself staying out all night somewhere and worried it won't start, or hold charge in the morning.

TBH my instinct is the fact it stops working as an electrolyte if it gets too hot, shutting down thermal runaway (and hence those Li battery fires that unfortunate headlines from time to time) is the big feature for this tech. Provided the internal pressure is not too high of course. People regularly handle 6 atm pressure vessels.

Beer because that's what a lot of those pressure vessels contain.

"Besides, having a way for a voter to prove they have voted "

Or perhaps it's time to repeal the fact that you have to express a preference for voting when you register to vote?

Actually the suggestion was not to prove you'd voted.

It was to verify that a vote could be identified back to a real person, if necessary.

"ts time for a revolution to throw off these big brother police state fanatics."

Understand that the politicians are just the visible part of this "Coalition of the willing," as GW Bush put it.

You need to identify the cabal of data fetishist civil servants in the Home Office (or Interior Ministry in many European countries) and their allies in the spying agencies that are pushing this data fetishist agenda.

Without identifying them the (violent) removal of one bunch of sock puppets will simply be used as a pretext to justify more spying laws, as has each recent previous incident in the UK and France.