Posts by Tom 7

RE @Dan 55

I'm going to write a new language based on the paradigm of ' functional illiterates'. There's some market for suing there.

Re: I thought that was normal?

I'm 6k away and they upgraded us to FTTC. Alas they also re-designated my cabinet to be right next to the exchange. The openretch guys who come here regularly to fix the copper still call the box a couple of miles away 'the cabinet'

Re: Twat

Parliament too - and that harms more people.

Re: Overstretch

DainB you state "Tesla Inc does not have any unique technology" which can pretty much be said about Apple. They only have unique technology for their customers.

Re: Recycle platters from modern hard disks

Now I know where to get those magnets I need for my home made wind powered generator.

Re: Let's see

And if someone gets a quantum computer working presumably it can mine BTC at whatever rate the network can absorb them.

Re: Not used since 1980

Re chemist - you can write for the MK14 in assembler now! There is a table for TASM somewhere - and there's even a smallC compiler for it.

Re: Did he do it or not?

Thumbnails does suggest they were adverts on other pages and the leaky cop did also say the thumbnails timestamps were closely timed with email activity on his account so he may have even had some javascript opening links for him. I personally dislike the man and his politics enormously but the cop in this is being a wanker of the first order.

Re:You can't legislate anti-stupidity behind the keyboard

No, but you can encourage people to put procedures in place to counteract the stupidity. Having your arse handed to you by the courts can encourage company bosses to actually ensure the stupidity is procedured out to the point of it being near impossible.

Re: Martlesham Heath Re the Tower

The A10s from the local US airbases used to use if for navigation so we used to suffer regular earthquakes as they passed overhead trying to find their way home. The view up there is no better - all you can see is Suffolk and the Sea and Suffolk is generally the flatter of the two,

Re: If BT can lower their prices........

@headly_grange. Well the government specifically managed BTs budgets to ensure this sort of thing happened. BT was making several hundred million profit before privatisation and one of the reasons was it was not allowed to invest that money in the infrastructure.

@ArrZarr

While you're right about the fact its learning from scratch its worth pointing out that there are many problem solving (well search algorithms really) that can solve sodoku with merely a list of rules. Even a simple program can use CSP (constraint satisfaction problem) to solve sudoku from the simple restrictions of 1-9 on a row and 1-9 in a 3*3 block - I had one on a pi zero that would solve it the moment you put in the last number required to solve it and if I could be arsed it could be modified to run on https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnusim8085/ if you upped the memory to 32k.

Re: DNA

Na - some of his Dr Snuggles scripts were amazing. Well I was off work with bronchitis and well above the recommended dosage of whisky and Hills Bronchial Balsam which had morphine it and was the only cough medicine that ever worked.

Re: Not IT-related

I had a Cossard twin beam oscilloscope and gym accessory that someone donated to me. One day a screw leapt of my work bench, clattered across the scope and disappeared down a ventilation whole smaller than it and one of the beams disappeared. Power off, lid off, spot screw, reach for screw, throw scope 15' across the room tearing a couple of dozen intercostals.

They dont make capacitors like they used to.

Or scopes - after a few weeks I could drag it back to where it should live and all was well!

Re: More Power...!

They experimented with blasting icebergs to pieces. I think it was to help shipping. It became apparent very quickly that icebergs can absorb exponentially more power than we can generate. I think fog will be a bit similar.

Re: Excel - the thin edge of the wedge.

Spreadsheets in general have probably set back IT more that any other IT invention. I've seen whole IT departments leave the same day an accountant retired rather than have to maintain the unmaintainable,

Re: One wonders ...

By the time we have the technology to chase it we will be able to give it a going over from afar. I would imagine a moon base alfalfa (they will be growing their own) will be able to give it a fairly hefty whack with a laser or three and get a good idea of its make-up. Chasing it and attempting to land might prove a little more expensive and not much more illuminating.

@Martin Summers

Putting it on fuel has its problems. Apart from pushing the price up and encouraging further fuel cleansing to avoid tax - you'd be amazed how people come down to my remote farm to try and steal red diesel for just that purpose. Also smuggling is easy - most foreign truckers coming to this country have extra large tanks already to avoid having to re-fuel here and any excess can often be bought from returning truckers.

Re: Open data!

I'm going to have to get a bigger monitor to use that as background. Though with my ADSL I'll have time to save up!

Re: WTF?

Oh and a happy 60th to Fortran while were about it!

a switch from RPI to CPI

It already has - ISTR a letter informing me of that a couple of years ago.

I believe the goverment keeps trying to get the courts to allow it to back out of its promise to underwrite the whole of the pension that I and many others were promised at the time.

Love the tories dislike of legal contracts.

Re: There are two problems with using sewers for networking

When I worked for BT ISTR plenty of cables being severed by other people digging up the roads for their own services. And the submarine cables used to get eaten by Sharks.

If I was putting cable in a sewer I think the best place for it would be along the roof and so long as you dont leave the ladders in the rats aren't going anywhere near that.