Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Re: WTF? "Sun level" @ AC

Have you never seen Buzzfeed?

Actually I'd never even heard of Buzzfeed, until El Reg ran their last one of these pisstakes. For destroying which blissful state of ignorance, I personally blame The Register!

Worse, since that day, a few weeks ago, I keep seeing Buzzfeed crap now. It's almost like my internal bullshit filters had protected me, until The Register managed to bypass them. Damn you El Reg!

If any articles on My Little Pony porn turn up on here, I'm definitely not going to read them...

Re: Always wondered about this.

TeeCee,

I was invited to dinner at my Mum's the other day. Well I say dinner. It was more to set up her new printer and sort out her heating controls.

Not that it's that hard to use, but the installers stuck it in a kitchen cupboard, so I have to kneel on the kitchen stool, and prop a torch up against the tea caddy. It's pretty unintuitive though, hence me being asked to sort it out. And the bugger crashed, so I had to find the master switch and power-cycle the whole system. On which subject, the stupid things always seem to lose their settings during power cuts.

Oh a final point, the house builder decided to rely entirely on thermostatic radiator valves. Which are shit, as far as I'm concerned. You need to be a qualified installation engineer to get even vaguely close to setting those up right, and with no overall thermostat, the heating just seems to run until the timer cuts it. As there always seems to be one radiator somewhere, demanding power.

Hence I want to get her onto a wireless thermostat. Google's NEST thing is no use, as it seems to be a wired replacement for one. And while doing that, why not give her control of the system from a friednly app on her iPad, rather than the crappy, cheap and hard to use controls that came with the boiler?

Re: That about wraps it up for SpaceX

Satellites is my hope. Maybe once repair of satellites is possible, they'll be designed for in-orbit repair. In which case great, that's what'll be done. But there's a huge fleet currently up there, which are all basically custom designed. You'd need to custom design the repair robot. Which is hideously expensive, and would need lots of research and testing. So it may well be cheaper to bung a few mechanics into orbit with a refuelling and repair tug plus small space garage.

If you can do minor repairs on, and refuel, 2 satellites per month (24 per year), at an average of $200 million cost each - giving them say another 30% lifespan - that's $1.6 billion worth of new satellites people don't need to build. Give 30% back to the customer, so it's worth it, and that gives you $1.1 billion to play with.

Say it takes 4 Falcon 9 launches a year for crew rotation and new parts deliveries, at $100m a pop, that gives you $600 million per year income to cover the debt costs of the station and space tugs, plus $100 million per year in non-rocket costs, satellite spare parts manufacture, and salaries.

Back-of-a-fag-packet I know, but that looks like a viable business model to me. $600m a year over 10 years ought to buy you a decent little space station.

Re: Float? More like Sink!

Might I point out here that Amazon has barely made a profit for its entire existence. It doesn't make profits, even though it runs profitable business units. Because it plows its profits back into new investments. And has consistently done so - and yet the shareholders seem perfectly happy, and the shares keep on going up.

How many billions did they spend on cloud servers and infrastructure when they had no market, no customers and definitely no profits to speak of? I don't remember hearing a peep out of Wall Street.

Re: Off topic

Given how cheap the charges are, that £5k battery is the equivalent of your fuel bill, not your car bill. So at £1.30 a litre, £5k gets you 3,850 L of fuel. Or 874 gallons. Or 35,000 miles at 40 mpg.

35,000 miles is 2-3 years fuel for a lot of people. So if the battery lasts 5-10 years, I guess that means you're quids in. Not that I'm a massive supporter of electric cars - but you may as well analyse things properly.

It's only supposed to be 10p-20p to charge one of these things up, so that's only £70 for a year's charges, and I'm ignoring it from my back-of-envelope calculations.

I can still remember a trip to the telephone exchange in the mid-80s. It was Project X that they were so proud of I think? I got a Buzby badge as well. Huge rooms with racks of gear, batteries and generators. There's probably just a small server room there now. Plus backup power.

Re: Or....

Don't you go bringing boring sanity into this nostalgia and grumpfest! It's not acceptable!

We shall sit here in our cardigans and slippers, and pontificate about how it were better in t'good old days. In our best Fred Trueman voices. And you shall not interrupt with any of your optimistic rubbish about how anything modern can be any good!

Particularly as in this case the remake is probably going to be crap. And no-one likes to watch people getting paid huge amounts of cash to piss all over their childhood memories. And I didn't mention George Lucas once...

About ten years ago I caught something called 'The New Adventures of Paddington'! In which Paddington helps the police catch a bank robber. Of the many things that were wrong with this appalling travesty were:

1. They were doing it as cartoon action, rather than a nice voiceover (like Michael Hordern) virtually reading it as a story.

2. It was in bright primary colours, rather than the good old faded colours of the original.

3. It was fast-moving and loud. As above, they'd taken it from gentle bedtime story to loud action.

4. The horrible mid-atlantic woman-doing-child sound of whoever voiced Paddington. Nasty, shouty, nasal, bleurgh!

5. He stopped a bank robbery! The worst that should happen to Paddington is that he gets in trouble with the grumpy next door neighbour, or gets so covered in sticky marmalade that he has to go home for a wash.

I guess all the changes stemmed from the fact they'd aimed it at older kids. i.e. destroyed the whole point, spirit and charm of the original. Philistines! Nothing wrong with child heroes stopping bank robbers on kids cartoons. Just bloody well make up your own, and leave millions of peoples' early childhood nostalgia out of it. Paddington would have given the producers one of his sternest stares.

Nostalgia is good business. Why else do they still sell those Fisher Price pull along phones, with the moving eyes and rotary dials? No child of an age to play with one has ever seen a rotary dial phone. Once they hit three, they're trying to mug all nearby adults for their iPhones and iPads...

But they sell, becuase people my age remember them, and we're now in our 30s and 40s. So I guess they hope for DM merchandise sales. And who amongst us wouldn't want a DM outfit with eyepatch?

Well that's Google's choice. They have to make a decision on how good a search engine they want to be. If they don't want to invest in being a good search engine that provides relevant data, then perhaps someone else will do it better

With great truckloads of money comes great responsibility. They make huge wodges of cash from advertising strapped to search results, those search results are mostly a social good but also have a social cost, they can therefore put some of that profit into dealing with it. Or they can bugger off. Those are the options that society should give them. The money will still be great, after this decision is implemented - so I'm sure they'll cope with making 99.?% of the profits they made before...

If the scale is built into the shelf, how will it cope with my dinner last night? I took out the butter, left-over ham from Sunday lunch, leftover roast peppers (from ditto), eggs, fruit juice and cheese. Only the butter, fruit juice and cheese went back in, as the ham and 2 eggs disappeared into the pot.

How can it work out from all that change what's going on? As happens the cheese is dangerously low, so will need replenishing next shop.

I was cooking. I was in a hurry, and hungry. I grabbed everything I needed in one go, it all went back in the fridge together quickly, when my carbonara was cooked - to minimise time between serving and eating. I don't want to faff with a scanner and touchscreen in either of those circumstances.

I can see an online shopping tablet app working with RFID tags containing sell-by dates, plus past sales data, being able to help populate your shopping list. But to be honest, I don't see it being all that useful, because it would be so hard to train. None of the people I know eat the same 7 meals per week, and most of them buy what's on offer, or looks interesting, when they shop.

So all we're really talking about is keeping up with staple foods. Of which my fridge contains ketchup, salad dressing (of varying types), condiments, cheese (again of various types depending on what I'll be doing with it and season), milk, fruit juice, limes, eggs and veg (of various types). In my store cupboard there's spices (hard to track as they're used in such small quantities), oils and sauces (worcestershire, soy etc.), which aren't easy to track. Then finally you've got things like baked beans, tinned tomatoes, potatoes, pasta, rice. Of which only the tins can be tracked without trouble.

So for my fridge (and to be fair freezer) staples, this might save me 10-20 seconds a week. Out of the 30-60 seconds I spend before I go shopping, checking what I need. Well I'll pay £10 extra on a fridge for that, as long as it takes no more than 10 minutes to set up, and is likely to work, be easy to use, and not make the fridge more unreliable. That's not a compelling proposal.

I'm thinking of going to online shopping. But that makes this even less attractive. As I'll be doing that on my iPad, in my kitchen. Where it is but the work of seconds to open the fridge door, and look.

Re: what is needed ...

I'm sold! How much do I owe you for mine?

Re: There is very little doubt

Not while I still control my router they won't. How do they intend to get online? There's no mobile signal in my flat.

Re: At the risk of being a fuddy-duddy

I was on holiday in Barcelona. Walking down the street with friends, when we were approached by a company who organise parties. Well actually, they organise pub crawls.

I could see 15 bars from the crossroads where I was standing. Goodness knows how many others there were. The day I need someone to organise a pub crawl under those circumstances, is the day I give up on life. Or the day I buy a fridge that writes my shopping list for me, even though I spend under a minute a week writing it.

There are many problems with this. Computers aren't actually intelligent. They can only know what they're programmed to know. And who can be arsed to train their fridge to manage their shopping. It'll take hours of training to get it even half good. Assuming good user interfaces. The fridges will not have good user interfaces, as they will be designed by the same people who brought you smart TVs and the kind of remote controls you get on cheap DVD players!

Plus how are you scales going to work? Only one item per shelf? How will they survive the cold and the orange juice and soup spills? And children?

Re: What is needed is some sort of robot....

but you will most likely be more concerned with what you are going to eat next not what you had last night. Will the fridge be able to do some sort of predictive analysis or will you have to spell out what you are going to need for dinner tomorrow night?

Fridge: My programming says your mistress will be here tonight. I have ordered oysters and champagane as instructed.

Me: Oh no! I'd forgotten! Mr Smithers the Managing Director is over for dinner tonight, and so my wife will be home in 5 minutes! What am I going to do?!?!

Fridge: Quick! Washing machine, open up and hide the oysters and champagne in your drum.

[doorbell rings, Wife and Mr Smithers both enter]

Me: Oh Mr Smithers. How good to see you. Do take a seat. Please have a glass of red wine.

Mr Smithers: Ooops! Butterfingers. I do apologise I appear to have spilled my wine on your tablecloth.

Wife: Don't worry dear. I'll just get those in the washing machine now, so they don't stain.

Me: Oh no dear!!! I'll do that!!

[doorbell rings, Mistress enters]

Me: Quick! Hide in the bathroom before Wife sees you.

Wife: Husband! What are these oysters doing in the washing machine?!?

[doorbell rings]

Me; Oh no! It's the vicar!

Wife: Oh! I have to hide. I owe the vicar £100 for the sponsored walk, and I haven't got it. I'll just go into the bathroom...

Re: Am I the only one who gets this?

Anon,

I'm guessing you don't have kids. The milk doesn't go back into the fridge until someone sees it on the counter, and shoves it back in. Or in fact guests. Where the milk may be on the table by the tea and coffee stuff for 10 minutes.

The same is definitely true for cheese, pickle, ketchup, fruit juice.

Some sort of scanner by the bin and recycling might work though?

Re: Well... let's see...

What when I take several items out at once when cooking (as I try to be efficient when I'm organised), and then put them back in together? Which item lost how much weight?

What about left-overs. I regualarly cook for more people than are present, in order to freeze leftover portions, so I have (actually edible) ready-meals available to me.

How much in any fridge is staples, to be instantly replaced and how much is what's available or on offer? Not including parties. My fridge should always contain eggs, milk, limes, fruit juice, various condiments, yoghurt and cheese. Anything else depends on what I could find, or who's coming round for dinner.

What about using multiple suppliers? I have a greengrocer at the end of my road. I try to buy all my veg from them, unless laziness kicks in and I'm in Sainsbury's anyway.

What's the point of filling out only a third of my shop? Only about 30-40% of any shop goes in the fridge. The rest is cupboards, bathrooms, laundry cupboard.

How much is this bloody fridge going to cost? And how long before it breaks down? It's got multiple cameras, multiple weight sensors. What happens when the bulb goes in the fridge, and no-one can be arsed to replace it, so the cameras can't see anything? I'm prepared to believe that the cameras will survive cold and condensation - but not the weighing shelves getting stuff plonked on them every couple of hours, and water dripped on them. And I'd worry for the touchscreen on the door too.

In my opinion the answer is twofold. Online shopping is good. Have a tablet, wander round kitchen, look in fridge, freezer and cupboards, see what's missing, pick from list of favourites on website, order.

But I still prefer to go to the shop. So for me, shopping list app on smartphone. When you use the last but one of something, take phone from pocket, add to list. After you've typed the first few letters, it auto-completes if it's something you've used before.

The internet of fridges is still way too complicated.

Re: No matter how hard you try

Tom38,

You worked in the New Members Bar. So does that mean that the MCC are so stratified that even once you've reached the hallowed halls of the Pavillion, you've still got to wait another twenty years for someone to die, so you're allowed into a nicer members bit? I suppose this doesn't really surprise me, if true.

I seem to recall that the Lords enormo-hamper was only about £35. Which isn't terrible for an entire day's munchies for 2. Given the quality of the cake they produce. Also, I refuse to encourage them by buying the £90 tickets. That's ludicrous.

Myself I wouldn't dream of entering a cricket ground without appropriate picnic already on-hand. I like a bit of smoked salmon or ham and nice bread, a bottle of cava (Lords still allow it), boiled eggs, a couple of kinds of cake, pork pies, crisps, fruit juice, something salady (as an apology to healthy eating), all topped up with a few locally purchased beers and ice creams. Sport is good for you!

There's no way you can get through that lot in 7 hours, without a few slow bits.

As for the draw, I don't think England deserved it for the sometimes inept way we batted. Against an attack with little pace, on a flat track. The bowlers were nearly good enough to win it, despite the faults of the batting line-up. Something that's been happening for the last few years. Declaring earlier would have been a better move. But then captains used to do that, and people were awfully rude to them the times it went wrong.

Re: There'll never be a good solution for tax shenanigans.

You can boycott stuff. But consumers tend not to. I believe that enough people stopped going to Starbucks that this persuaded them the loss of sales and damage to their reputation were too high. Hence they're moving their European HQ to the UK, where the vast majority of their European sales are.

However, there's always going to be a problem. Accountancy is an art, not a science. There's just no way to write rules to cover all situations. Companies frequently have legitimate fights with their own auditors. I can remember, from my bean-counter days at a US multi-national, that our auditors thought we'd saved too much money for a rainy day (in part international tax liabilities as happens) - and they forced us to halve our provisions and report it as profit to the shareholders instead.

We thought we were legitimately keeping a bit of money in reserve for several major issues we could see coming. But the auditors seemed to feel that it would be better to have a bigger profit this year (and possibly artificially boost the share price), and then if this stuff came up next year we'd have to report an unexpected cost, thus cutting profits, surprising Wall Street, and thus causing the share price to plunge. The company never paid dividends, so I've absolutely no idea what the auditors thought they were playing at.

Cliff,

I don't think Barnes Wallis wore a lab coat. And I'd say he was definitely a boffin. I think it's perfectly acceptable to wear a tweed jacket with leather elbow-patches and still attain boffinry. In fact, it rather goes with the pipe.

Oh and architects are most definitely not boffins. They're mostly the bain of my working life...