Posts by Tom 7 8318 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
Lyons tea rooms were ubiquitous. Almost every town in England had at least one. The guys running LEO managed to write code to do stock control, logistics and calculating staff pay and tax on a machine less powerful than a modern keyboard controller. For several years LEO worked out takings, tax, wages, refilling stock requirements and deliveries. 12 or so people ran the computer and had ERP worked out far more efficiently that several hundred Oracle consultants 30 years later and for astronomically smaller money.
I read that book not long after it came out. At the time I was helping to manage the IT for several hundred Windows machines and a few bits of big iron. It didnt amaze me that a few thousand valves and some competent programmers pissed all over a few billion transistors and some MS shit.
Hybrid rockets are incredibly simple compared to liquid fuelled rockets. Basically you have a tube lined with your fuel with a hole down the middle and an igniter lining that and a choke at the bottom to increase the thrust. You set off the igniter while blowing the oxidiser into the top of the cylinder and away you go. I've spent a few Sundays at EARS near Cambourne Cambs watching people launch these things.
Being a cylinder of flaming gas resonance can turn the thing into a fiery organ pipe and the noise, light and smoke are something to behold. As the power can be controlled by restricting the amount of oxidiser you blow into the fuel these things can be controlled and I have seen a video of someone hopping one along a fence!
I did see one 1/3rd size V2 using rubber as the fuel but alas something went wrong and it didnt get more than a couple of hundred foot up.
A small diameter spacecraft is likely to crash into the soft surface of an asteroid and impart its momentum and no more. The same spacecraft in a zorb type protection would bounce of possibly imparting twice as much momentum. The impact point can be chosen to maximise the effect as the spacecraft approaches.
It depends what you use if for. I've got a machine that I use for AI research* and most of the stuff just gets dumped on the GPU and then the PCIe is effectively ignored for three or four hours. Setup and Results/teardown would be faster on a faster machine but overall it would cost me a fortune for a small % of total run time.
* OK pissing about but then isn't gaming?
I been using Linux since before 1.0 kernel and have been mostly happy with Torvald's management of the most important piece of software in the world for at least 20 years. But I do wonder what happens when he steps down or is removed. There are many interests that would like to destroy Linux and far far more who would merely like the privileged of running it despite being no-where near capable of running a whelk stall.
Its the seed corn for so many commercial interests it will be interesting to see if they can learn to co-operate on it when he goes or whether they will kill the goose that gives their daily bread a nice egg to make it palatable and nutritious. The economic cost of each having to maintain their own goose is going to be ruinous to almost all of them. Some may even feel that the socialist Linux must die and prove the pen that signs off on their harikari is indeed mightier than the sword.
There might be better languages out there for the job but the developers have not produced anything quite as easy or as powerful as PHP for ASP. I keep trying different things and after a while I return to PHP for hacking things quickly. The language is a bit it dshit but not so shit as you cant encapsulate the shit bits and once you've done that it doesnt get in your way or impose obscure restrictions that seem to crop up in most other ASP type frameworks.
A relative of ours in OZ went to visit another a short few hundred miles away on a straight road. On the way back they were killed when they dropped into a dip in the road that had been created by an earthquake while they were visiting.
Not sure you average sat nav can keep up with that shit.
I acquired a taste for wine but then they started adding sulphites by the bucket load. Its supposedly a preservative but is used in quantities that affect the taste, and give me a raging hangover. My pa in law got some sulphite 'free' red for one of his wedding anniversaries so I could have a glug and it was preferred by all who tried it - so I ended up on scotch. What a pity!!
I have my own black strawberry grapes with produce a superb red - or did until last winters storms did for the polytunnel. I'm going to take about 300 cuttings next spring and plant them out sans grafting and hope the phyloxera people dont come calling!
That reminds me of the time where I borrowed a friend's prized Pirrelli moped that would do 60mph and drove several miles, stopped for a was and set off again not realising I'd kicked the key in the steering lock which prevented it turning past a certain point on one side but didnt defeat the ignition. I managed to lean it over at the next bend after a long straight but clipped the hawthorn hedge and rolled along it for a hundred yards of so before spinning round on the helmet. I was pulling Hawthorne spikes out of bits of my body for months after!
My OCD gets triggered by people with no knowledge of IT managing IT projects - and this frequently includes the customer. Quite a few times I've written code that does what I believe the customer actually wants rather than what the consultant and customer have come up with together and then found some excuse to show it working to them much to their great delight.
Working for an MBA is like getting in a taxi with a driver who cant drive, doesnt know where you are, doesnt understand one way streets or road maps and hasnt a fucking clue where your destination is, its often quicker to walk.
At the time of the bodge its likely the programmer was respected and in a position to fix the bodge later, The bodge being something demanded by someone higher up. The the higher up shifts the goal past and outsources leaving the bodge in place for eternity despite warnings from the programmer. Its unlikely the programmer did it to keep their job, more likely someone higher up with no clue thought they could save some money, or gain power by outsourcing something that could actually be done far cheaper in house if left to the people that know.
I've actually worked in one place where programmers have, by refusing to tell contractors what their work involves or sign new contracts to make them do that. That involved a small council IT dept with 1/10th of the people in their IT dept comparted with similar sized councils that outsourced.
Some people take their jobs seriously and are best left to get on with it where possible.
But like the boss popping round its also totally inaccurate. I'm 6'5 and unless someone gets me a taller desk I need to get up and wander around regularly to avoid having a blood clot at work or just feeling bloody uncomfortable which is a bit shit for productivity. At one place I used to regularly bump into the boss two levels up in the corridor (where I actually did my best work most of the time as others phones weren't needing to be answered) and one day he questioned my being away from my desk a lot. I just quipped 'only about as much as you' which rather stumped him. But like software your boss doesnt know what's actually going on in your head and its only copy typists that can be accurately monitored in this way. They are wasting their own time and fucking people off which as far as I am concerned is the opposite of good management of staff.
I encourage everyone to work in something like Zim Desktop Wiki - I've written something similar that uses CK editor and stores documents in a DB along with proper security.
Once people start working in (basically) free flowing HTML in documents no longer than one subject they seem to get used to it quite quickly and realise that they can write one document for PC/Tablet and Phone and no-one has to print it.
I had the honour of working of fuckingexpensivebitsofkit before the PC came out. Our CAD system for chip layout cost $300,000 a seat and had a massive colour screen at eye level and four button puck on a large tablet and an OS that allowed you to write gestures and attach them to commands, so a Z clockwise on the red button would zoom in the the area of the Z you wrote on the screen and a Z on the red button anticlockwise would zoom out in the opposite way. So long as the gesture was unique in the way it traversed over the 3*3 imaginary grid that the gesture covered then away you went. It was the most productive WIMP interface I've ever used and I have tried emulating it on other machines but no-one else seems to grok it. It does work well as a 4*4 grid in javascript on a two button mouse where you can get over a 100 unique and non-easily confused gestures.
My only experience with secretaries was though the ones that worked for my dad and his colleagues at his uni. They were the most amazingly talented and knowledgeable and organised people I have ever come across. My Dad made it to Head of Dept and when in using uni facilities (pool and gym etc) as some family were allowed I'd end up hanging around his or another's office waiting for a lift home where I got to see how people with Double Firsts from Oxbridge were manipulated and cajoled and basically nudged into not making utter twats of themselves. Hearing a letter being dictated in anger and then half an hour later hearing the polite version the secretary had moulded it into while giving the signatory the impression it was all their idea was something to behold.
The PC has a lot to answer for - possibly the destruction of education and industry in the UK by letting people like my Dad write their own correspondence!
Used to get them with BT and get first class travel. I used to delight in sitting on the train with some pompous oaf convinced that I was trying it on (t-shirt and jeans and a copy of the gruniad) would get really pissed off when the inspector would say "Thank you Sir" as he handed back the warrant. I had to do a some week long courses with involved daily travel and would amuse myself by doing the Times crossword (just write gibberish in) in about 3 minutes and then leave the paper on the seat and go for a slash and return to find it folded differently. The Friday evening returns trips from London were often filled with drunk city traders who saved me from applying for any work there, I can imagine working for them must have been extremely unpleasant.
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