* Posts by Tom 7

8318 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009

Airbus confirms software brought down A400M transport plane

Tom 7

Re: Impossible Testing Scenario

Even my software can ask what hardware there is present before loading the wrong stuff.

They used to call them sanity checks.

Galapagos volcano's MILE-HIGH WALL of FIRE menaces SUPER-RARE iguanas

Tom 7

Re: Hot meat pies?

Large tortoises have evolved to surf down the lava on their backs. They actually work together to ensure eruptions happen regularly.

Will Hay: Britain's bumbling star of the screen and skies

Tom 7

Re: Where's the astronomy angle

he found a spot on saturn! Re-read it!

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Bog-standard boxty

Tom 7

Good to see she's given up smoking.

Well the pipe anyway!

Singapore to trial 10Gbps home broadband

Tom 7

Re: Just one question

When ADSL hit general use in the UK a friend of mine managed to torrent enough films to take a lifetime to watch. Now he's got FTTC he's still at it.

The greater the bandwidth the lower the baud rate.

Windows Server 2003 end of support draws ever closer

Tom 7

Re: Unlikely...

I see them regularly but then I roll my own kernels for antique machines when pissed so its not surprising.

City of birth? Why password questions are a terrible idea

Tom 7

Re: Choose a question (and answer) on car numbers

The fucking car park has started to ask my registration number before it will give me a ticket these days!

I might learn it soon - but by the time I'm back at the car the dogs had a shit so no need for the ticket!

SAVE THE PLANKTON: So much more than whale food

Tom 7

How much more was there before we nearly wiped out the whales.

Someone spotted that most whales dive deep to get their food but poo at the surface. When there where a lot of whales they would have provided a massive amount of nutrients at the surface for a much larger eco system.

When we piss in our chips...

BT's taxpayer-funded broadband monopoly may lock out rivals, says independent report

Tom 7

Re: BT Scope rubbish

My cabinet was around a mile and a half away until they got money to FTTC the exchange - now its back at the exchange 6 miles away on about a foot of fibre!

Manchester car park lock hack leads to horn-blare hoo-ha

Tom 7

The future is bright

for the internet of pranks and LOLS.

Airplane HACK PANIC! Hold on, it's surely a STORM in a TEACUP

Tom 7

Re: @Robin - Cheese

Try some cabralese - can kill from 10 paces and tastes superb!

Robots.txt tells hackers the places you don't want them to look

Tom 7

Re: I don't understand

robots.txt says which places you shouldn't visit but should also contain decoy areas that just fuck about with any robot that goes there. If you know how to monitor load from a page you can really piss them about when you have some spare grunt to keep them amused.

Steve Jobs movie gets October release date

Tom 7

I'll wait

for the smaller and easier to swallow follow up.

Messerschmitts, Sinclairs and a '50s living room: The Bubblecar Museum

Tom 7

A few years ago

you could get a kit for an Isetta that with a BMW850 engine and Mini wheels would do 60 in less than 3.4 and over 140 flat out. Cant find em now - guess they tank slapped themselves into tomato soup!

So why the hell do we bail banks out?

Tom 7

Re: Fractional reserve

Whatever fractional reserve you have above the natural level of growth (historically 2%Pa for several hundred years - its really hard to tell of late) you add a positive feedback loop which leads to instability unless you match it with inflation. If the finance sector grows faster than the economy as a whole it becomes parasitical rather than potentially beneficial.

Tom 7

Re: Longer Term Impact

The reason why we haven't had inflation is because the money did not end up in the economy - if merely filled a hole the banks had made. None of it has 'trickled down' - it never does.

IN YOUR FACE, Linux and Apple fans! Oculus is Windows-only for now

Tom 7

Re: Serious question ...

If you want plant layout training pop round mine - I've got experience in spades.

Tom 7

Re: Windows only? Well that's not Okay Facebook.

Charles 9

I can only guess that you are the best ever game player and can beat a game hollow in a week or two or the games you play aren't worth the money. There are a lifetime of games for Linux , perhaps not the one your mates make you play but thats life for you.

You're going to have stop calling people 'cold fish': THIS one is HOT-BLOODED

Tom 7

Re: Warm blooded?

If you put a hook in a fishermans mouth and drag them around underwater they dont cry out so it cant hurt. They only resist and flail about to make it more fun for the fisherfish.

BOFH: Getting to the brown, nutty heart of the water cooler matter

Tom 7

Sqonque!

The sound of ones nasal cavity being laughed onto a keyboard.

You owe me one!

Hacker 3D prints device that can crack a combo lock in 30 seconds

Tom 7

Re: Analog Security

The MIT Lock Guide seems to be written by Theodore T Tool.

mmmmmm

RAF radar station crew begs public for cash to buy gaming LAN kit

Tom 7

Re Isolation

or was that Midi?

Oracle proposes to deliver Java 9 SDK on September 22nd, 2016

Tom 7

I cant wait

oh no I can.

That DRM support in Firefox you never asked for? It's here

Tom 7

This may make it tricky for me to watch content

but I have a feeling it will make it easy for hackers to see my machine...

Backwaters in rural England getting non-BT gigabit broadband

Tom 7

Re: If I wanted...

Sell city property, move to country, use internet 'at will', realise profit from house exchange means you dont have to work...

Lies, damn lies and election polls: Why GE2015 pundits fluffed the numbers so badly

Tom 7

Re: a 48 year-old writes

Carl - I remember just how shit it was to have one parent working and the other on domestic duty when the kids came home, owning a house and having a lot of money left over. Leaving school and going to a relatively free university education and walking straight into a well paid job.

Its so much better that my children dont have much of a chance of any of the above after the tory years and the tory-lite years.

At least they can have aspirations rather than actual chances.

You say you want a musical revolution. Actually, have three

Tom 7

Re: Rock was born ten year before 1964...

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was rocking by the 40's. But as people point out it might be better to describe a musical genre as beginning when the mainstream start to notice - though this can leave you with the impression that the music industry actually helps musicians which it patently doesnt.

C++ Daddy Bjarne Stroustrup outlines directions for v17

Tom 7

Re: Will anyone really understand the language?

The more you understand about programming the more you will understand the language. And possibly other languages too.

The number of times I, and many colleagues, used to say 'Why would anyone want to do that FFS' only to later on another project going 'Wow! That's beautiful'.

Synths you've been gone: Vintage tech rules at Musikmesse 2015

Tom 7

Use your imagination

Keep an eye out for people giving away old organs on freecycle. Some of the later ones have midi output you can plug in to your PC and control stuff with - Bristol, Yoshimi etc. If you can get one with the footpedals you're made!

Not so much fun for live gig but well good for winding up the neighbours!

Microsoft to offer special Surface 3 for schools

Tom 7

Re: Chromebook?

Crouton? - though that's not so much disruptive as enabling.

Boffins laser print flexible transistors

Tom 7

Re: yes, but

My next door farm has just put a barn and if they could reach the 8% efficiency of polysilicon PV of the 1980's by printing this stuff on the sheets the roof is made of he'd be pulling in a good 40kw.

Now so long as HP dont make the ink he'd be quids in!

Fed-up Colorado man takes 9mm PISTOL to vexing Dell PC

Tom 7

Re: I think that may invalidate his warranty...

He could have bought a Dell recommended 9mm for several times the price though!

London man arrested over $40 MILLION HFT flash crash allegations

Tom 7

What an idiot

he should have done what the banks do and got someone else to play the other half.

There are a lot of burn phones in the city bins.

Google versus the EU: Sigh. You can't exploit a contestable monopoly

Tom 7

Re: Harm..

That cos you search term has -mail in it so that would take out ISPs that provide mail.

RSA supremo rips 'failed' security industry a new backdoor, warns of 'super-mega hack'

Tom 7

Re: Audiences

Higher walls and deeper moats have never worked. The people who are your greatest threat are those that work on the inside and want easier access through these walls and across these moats.

The next greatest threat come in over and under both.

Digital killed the radio star: Norway names FM switchoff date

Tom 7

Re: "big saving available for broadcasters"

And just which twat came up with the idea of making them incompatible with rechargeable batteries. I was given a DAB radio which is no use in the house so I took it up the pollytunnel only to discover that it lasts 10 minutes on rechargeable batteries. I've heard many other similar problems.

Some fuckers seem to have gone out of their way to ensure we have to buy expensive batteries! This seems to count for a lot of battery powered devices too.

National Grid's new designer pylon is 'too white and boring' – Pylon Appreciation Society

Tom 7

Re: White pylon

You have seen that the people who may possibly make the new plant at Hinkley are currently 3 times over budget on their current french plant and the pressure vessel is just a tad leaky. It was made the same way as the one they've already made for Hinkley apparently....

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-nuclear-strategy-faces-meltdown-as-faults-are-found-in-identical-french-project-10186163.html

Tom 7

re burying

Its a lot more expensive - and there is always the visual and logistical impact of the burying whilst its ongoing - you can pop a set of wires over a road overnight - a tunnel would be a couple of weeks of chaos.

It may be the best option in the long run as at the moment a dozen blokes with angle grinders could reduce the national grid to the point of being unable to recover from.

JetBrains releases CLion - new cross-platform IDE for C/C++ users

Tom 7

Re: Why "Data Networking"?

Doh!

Transparency thrust sees Met police buying up to 30,000 bodycams

Tom 7

Re: Can't wait for...

I think its more likely that the bit of film of you beating PC plods boots with your groin is in there somewhere but due to an indexing problem you have to find to 3 minutes in 720,000 hours of video.

Want to go green like Apple, but don't have billions in the bank?

Tom 7

Re: What about heat reuse

Most stuff wont get hot enough to boil water. A well designed liquid cooling system that uses pure convection could be used to recover some energy but it would probably not be worthwhile.

Heat pumps might be an idea. But even 40C water could be fed into solar panels for a boost for water and space heating purposes - I'd love a data centre next to me so I could use the heat in winter for my pollytunnels.

The Internet of things is great until it blows up your house

Tom 7

Re: If bitcoin is your answer ...

I've just had a check in ours (snack time!!) and nearly 40% of the items in it are our leftovers and we've just got back from holiday 5 days ago so I'd bet its normally higher than that.

I dont think I will be internettingofthings my leftovers and I'm guessing thats half of what I get from the fridge.

Anyway food poisoning is the only way for some people to loose weight.

LA schools want multi-million Apple refund after kids hack iPads

Tom 7

Re: Or to summarize...

Only an idiot would go to the richest computer company in the world and expect their hardware and software to do even a small amount of what it said on the tin.

If you went to Rolls Royce for a car you'd expect a decent vehicle with some security - California got some electric bikes with 2 tumbler combination locks and are rightly upset about it. My daughters school has bought into this shit and it really is a fucking disaster.

Tom 7

Re: Inventory management: We've heard of it...

When I was at school we got textbooks and tended to hand them in at the end of the year but ISTR there was some form of payment involved somewhere. Still have a copy of my Teachers version of the O'level maths course which I use to scare sixth formers (and their teachers) when arguments about grade inflation come up...

Tom 7

Re: "there have been challenges"

Challenge #5 expecting apple to play nice

Challenge #6 expecting apple software to actually work the way they said it would or providing some support when it doesnt

My daughters school has issued all the pupils with iPads - she sensibly wont let me play with hers but I get the impression that most useful stuff is done through the school web pages where her 1/6th the price tablet does a better job.

Google's new scribble-tab-ulous handwriting interface for Android

Tom 7

Re: Local Processing @james 51

You have a touch sensitive mirror!

But seriously it aint no different - so long as you always write that way. If your ambidextrous then who is holding the bloody tablet?

Radio 4 and Dr K on programming languages: Full of Java Kool-Aid

Tom 7

All languages are shit

however a good background in what might be termed software development techniques turns almost all of them into very useful tools.

Unless someone in the management process has been trained in software destruction techniques or MBA as it is generally known. Even I cant write good code in those situations - I never mastered the BOFH part of the course.

Silence is golden: Charlie Chaplin's The Tramp is 100 today

Tom 7

Re: He was very fond

Its was thought Randolph Hearst may have tried to kill Chaplin but killed Ince by accident on the yacht.

As for girls - he hasn't been associated with anyone younger than the legal age in the UK

BOFH: Never mind that old brick, look at this ink-stained BEAUTY

Tom 7

Spent several hours with my face in a calcomp pen plotter once

when it ate my tie - had to wait until security came wandering around the building for the fourth time and looked in at the window! Fortunately the off button was just within reach or I would have had a tattoo of a microchip on what would have been left of me. Amazingly over-engineered bit of kit.

LOOK OUT, Brits – is that a Facebook LASER-GUN drone above us?

Tom 7

Re M0usepad

Lots of solar cells no clouds!!! And if there's enough air to provide lift there's enough air for propellers to provide the thrust.