Posts by Alister

Re: There's nothing the Corsair does

You mean ' ' and ' ' ?

No not those two, the other two.

It used to be, until successive governments (of all political leanings) chronically underfunded it, and sold off or dismantled parts of it.

"The laws of gravity are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia"

I'm guessing it will be a private hospital or two, not the NHS

Re: Perhaps the answer...

@Cederic

I can watch the road or my speedometer.

If that is the case, you need to go and get some driving lessons.

You should be checking your mirrors, your speed and your surroundings at all times.

Re: No cursor keys

I admit that I still use EMACS occasionally, usually when I need psychotherapy or to play tetris or anything else that obviously belongs in a text editor that is lacking in vi.

:)

As they used to say, EMACS would be a great operating system, if only it had a decent text editor...

Re: Ha!

Pah, I have a Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle.

Re: "I will claim dominion"

Sounds a bit Game-of-Thrones to me :)

Re: Citrix VPN

a known vulnerability in a Citrix VPN product

And suddenly, all the "Shouldn't be using Windows, it's their own fault" types are looking a bit foolish.

It still is used in toy trains. Both Hornby and Bachmann models have had instances of mazac rot causing the frames to expand and distort, and even just break off.

Re: Hospital Slang

I heard a new one recently - new to me that is:

PRAATFO

Patient Reassured And Advised To Fuck Off

Triage Nurses take note.

okay with being in a concentration camp by the middle of the century and awakened by the sound of Chinese jackboots in the middle of the night

What utter and complete bollocks. You really think the Chinese are going to invade Europe or the US?

I've never heard such crap. Stop trying to spread such stupid fearmongering.

Re: What was originally procured is not what will be delivered

Prioritised communication and 'push to talk' were part of the original tender

They may well have been. The fact is that neither of those things were available at the time of the original tender, and still aren't now, properly.

I would like to know what is taking so long.

Tyring to build in functionality which doesn't exist takes time.

They could have added "must be powered by Unicorns and protected by Dragons" to the tender as well.

Re: The $64,000 question

Haven't you ever had a credit check? Those are all the sorts of questions they ask you when applying for credit.

Re: Even without RFPs

I don't think that's an especially American thing is it?

We commonly refer to the hoover when in fact it's an Electrolux, and have said, "can you get some kleenex", when we just mean Aldi tissues.

Re: Trumpet

I thought a Trumpette was one of his cheerleaders.

Yeah, somehow I can't picture how one would "viciously attack" a Twitter account - maybe sledgehammers, pitchforks or other weapons were involved?

Re: Neural net predictions

But I don't understand how you can use one to make predictions in this way - how do you verify the results?

I suppose it is analogous to the intuitive leaps that the human brain is capable of, and therefore the only way to verify the results is rugged testing of any prediction.

This is very much why Artificial Intelligence is so much sought after - getting a computer to have the ability to extrapolate from too little data - but it does make me wonder whether humans will question and verify what a computer comes up with in the same way they would a human, or whether we will be inclined - as we do now - to just say "well the computer said so" and not question it.

Re: Surprise, surprise...

I agree that at the moment, our use of high powered radio transmission is being supplanted by low powered localised alternatives, however, if / when regular commercial spaceflight gets going, then at present the only way for craft moving between bodies in the solar system to communicate will be by radio signals transmitted at a higher power than most localised terrestrial signals are, so the solar system will be more noticeable as a source of EM radiation.

Re: "Spying on me would be of no interest to the Chinese."

That's not a fair comparison.

The UK and US can materially impact my life by spying on what I do online. the Chinese government, not so much.

I too would rather be spied on by the Chinese than by the US.

Re: Cloud is expensive

Not that I condone this or agree with it in any way, but the big point is the move from Capital expenditure to Operational expenditure. To buy and run your own hardware is a big hit of Capex, which re-occurs every three to five years as you refresh.

Beancounters don't like Capex.

Moving stuff to the cloud is an ongoing Opex which makes the beancounters feel all fuzzy and warm.

The fact that the total Opex expressed over a number of years is way more than the equivalent re-occuring Capex doesn't seem to bother them...

Re: "And it carried out a fully automated remote landing on an even larger plane, "

That's a whoosh for Duncan Macdonald...

What the AC was meaning is that as written, the sentence could be interpreted as the autonomous plane landing ON TOP OF a larger plane - i.e an Air Carrier

Re: Dear God

As I've mentioned before, a lot of the common point-of-sale hardware only has drivers for Windows, so you don't have much choice, unless you can force the vendor to develop Linux drivers, which is unlikely.

Ok so some of your points have merit. But this:

barely replicating what the Russians have been doing since the ‘60s

Is complete bullshit.

Re: Oddly Enough...

short low level stealth trips across a border,

You must have heard how noisy a normal quadcopter drone is, so how loud do you think 18 rotors are going to be?

Stealth is not an option.