Posts by david 12

Re: Hmmm

Windows updates aren't enforced on a schedule. That's just the default setting.

Re: Political?

Conversely, it’s hard to blame the politicians for that. It's been observed that people demanding public apologies aren’t actually interested in forgiveness or whether what the person says is actually true.

The evidence suggests that when a prominent figure apologizes for a controversial statement, individuals are either unaffected or become more likely to desire that the individual be punished

God (i.e. the CEO)

I'm waiting for the BOFH to have a run-in with the CEO's secretary. The BOFH is good, but I wouldn't like to bet on that one. Maybe they'll come to an agreement?

a cycle helmet was made out of readily available corrugated cardboard

The reason bicycle helmets were made with a hard shell was a legislated standard.

When the first legislated standards for bicycle helmets were introduced, they introduced a requirement for "intrusion protection", probably inherited from the motor cycle standard. It required the helmet to protect against pointy objects.

The old design was open, to allow cooling, and the new standards have reduced or removed the requirement. I've still got an old open bar 'helmet' from my dad, and I've got a new 'helmet' that is just expanded foam.

"Independent mechanical systems" were why trains used to require a brakeman. A 100 years on, the systems are less independent and less mechanical, and we still get a train crash every couple of years where the driver has neglected to operate the independent mechanical system because it had to be operated as an independent mechanical system

Re: Agents perceive their environment, and all perceptions are saved in a comprehensive record

where a carefully crafted conversation could convince an agent of the existence of a past event that never occurred – and hallucination, among other things.

So just like real life.

Note: 'hallucination' is a domain-specific re-definition. 'delusion' would probably be closer, but perhaps the choice was deliberate to reduce cognate interference,

Re: Money

The real quote was from George Washington. I've seen the clip on YouTube.

Re: Why

I really don't see the any

Dunning-Kruger effect

FWIW, everything just needs to be connected identically to the power bus and to the CAN bus. This is simpler, cheaper, and generically more reliable.

A "smart" headlight doesn't need to be connected to switched power, and switched power doesn't need to be connected to the dashboard. And the dashboard also only has a power bus and CAN connection.

Re: AutoPatch: something like ...

Actually, autopatch (which is an enterprise tool), lets you put test machines in the test group, to test the patch before the patch is applied to the machines you've put in the user group.

Re: Little voice in the back of your mind

On a complete tangent: This would frighten and terrify my schizophrenic friend. He's had bad experiences with little voices in the back of his mind.

Try getting your own domain name for Google docs,

Our google docks, like our google mail, are hosted on a google domain, and that's the only way to edit them, but the public URL, like our public mail address and our login URL, use our own domain name. If you want to download or view our suppliers list from google docs. the URL in the link is ourcompany.com

Re: Earlier this week

I've seen people gambling on the Kentucky Derby immediately before the race was run. Seems highly suspicious. I hope the Kentucky Racing Commision investigates.

Re: Getting a refund

Maybe, just maybe, Provider B

In our case, Provider B was not only not providing service -- the exchange had been decomissioned and the lines cut. They lacked the physical ability to provide service.

They point out that we had an agreement to pay. We point out that the agreement is predatory, there is no consideration, and must be void.

Discussions are ongoing.

Re: I can see how this will work out...

Soon there isn't going to be any value left in the phone at all.

This is what happened in the movie business years ago. Everybody takes cash or a cut of gross, because net profit is always zero.

Re: And I had just bought some more Xeons, too…

Inflation is "low" partly because electronic devices have collapsed in price. Around here, food that cost 20c forty years ago costs $20 now -- inflation * 100.

I don’t see the need for the superciliousness.

I don't see the need for the downvotes. It didn't sound superciliousness to me: merely descriptive. We're used to thinking of a comms satellites as being "an electronic device", but something like a drag sail in a cube sat is more mechanical-engineering, and material-science. There is no reason to expect that students involved in the drag-sail part of the project have any particular skill or inclination towards electronics, and the Arduino is further evidence of that.

Re: Good Old Propaganda

It's primarily a US civilian system. Developed for civilian navigation after the Russians shot down an American airliner that had strayed into Russian airspace.

So, not only a civilian system, a civilian system specifically designed to give general location awareness to civilian airliners.

Yes, the American military piggy-backed on the civilian navigation system. That's what they do: any civilian navigation system is also useful to the military. You may remember that during WWI and WWII, the military was collecting postcards of foreign beaches. It was not that "postcards of beaches" were "primarily a military system".

Re: The trouble is…

Remote Mailslots is a fine protocol, if you are managing your own network and have no access to the Internet

An obvious example is running WSL2 inside Windows. Have you used your Yubikey in WSL2? The workaround is to create a slightly unusual client-server tunnel using a couple of tools that re-create a mail-slot like connection between the two sides.

WSL2 doesn't support USB passthrough -- but it does support SMB1, and it can open a SMB1 file on the host (usually only for opening a file on a remote host). On the client side, opening a mail-slot is opening a file: on the server side, opening a mail-slot can be running a program. It's exactly what is required. The Yubikey workarounds use a different protocol, and a different server-agent, but the functionality isn't unique: it's still the kind of connection that is sometimes required.

Whatever. "Looking at diagrams on my iPhone" is not being removed, and does not require a license. It doesn't even require an active internet connection.

There is something to complain about in the announcement if you want: you must have a (free) MS account, which you must connect to once a month. And you must have the files in your "one drive" folder on your device (although not necessarily actually present in the cloud). That's enough to complain about without having to make stuff up.

Re: I’m fine with it…

Sharepoint also is/was a content management system like WordPress. Like WordPress without addins, it only gives/gave you fairly simple designs for fairly simple content. (I don't know if, like WordPress, there is/was a world of third-party addins).

Like Google Sheets, you could display data in a spreadsheet format, without it being an Excel spreadsheet or an OpenOffice spreadsheet. At the time I used it, that was very limited. For other stuff, you could use an MS office viewer or OpenOffice to view a file. Now I guess you'd use Office 365 instead of sharepoint.

I was on Canary Channel for Edge, and was given an incompatible update. That they knew was not compatible with my OS, that they had announced was not compatible. That they were warning people was not compatible.

Re: Lithium is where you find it

There's about as much Lithium around as there is Copper or Nickel (depenging on how you count it. Lithium is lighter). More common than lead or silver or gold.

"Rare" as in "Rare Earths" means that is' not commonly available as lumps, like copper or silver or gold.

The stuff is everywhere. That's the problem. It would be cheaper if it was just all in one place.

Re: the book was better

Thank you both for the correction

Chat seems to be susceptible to this kind of error :)

Re: Customisation != setting pretty colours

(Cough) Gnome

Re: Have you been Hertz?

The typical error, which I saw frequently, and not just in vehicle credit, was the account where the initial down-payment, + month-in-advance was not correct, so the payments were always one month in arrears. But since payment was always made just before the due date, never more than a month in arrears, and never handled by collections. That meant that if you were one day late, suddenly you're a month late, facing penalty interest, and are being hassled by collections.

Re: Working

WW2 fighter pilots were happy to destroy their engines if it meant getting away with their lives

I've always wondered about landing craft. War movies show them stopping in water, and the soldiers/marines wading off.

But my father recounts supervising sailors who couldn't swim in the immediate post-war period. When they thought the landing craft was sinking, they "broke the seals", put on full power, and landed well up the beach.