Thank the gods they don't ship the Pi in a triangular pink box, eh?
Posts by Alister
4260 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2010
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Bonkers call to boycott Raspberry Pi Foundation over 'gay agenda'
Happy 4th of July: Norks tests another missile
Re: Mandatory Reading
Also its fairly obvious that " political and economic institutions" have an effect on economic success (or lack of it)
Very true.
Although, thinking about it, a non man made tsunami , famine , hurricane or earthquake could also have a significant negative effect on the lack of economic success of a nation , just as finding a shitload of non man made crude oil can have a very positive effect .
Not sure you can really class a tsunami, hurricane or oil deposit as an "institution" though?
Re: Mandatory Reading
"Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). "
Isn't this a bit "No Shit Sherlock"?
As far as I know there are no political and economic institutions which are not man made - politics and economics are abstract constructs of human brains, not entities that exist in reality.
Why, Robot? Understanding AI ethics
Not many people know that Isaac Asimov didn’t originally write his three laws of robotics for I, Robot. They actually first appeared in "Runaround", the 1942 short story
Really?
As "I Robot" was the title of an anthology of existing stories, rather than it containing any new material, I would have thought it was obvious that Asimov didn’t originally write his three laws of robotics for I, Robot.
Therefore "Not many people know" is bollocks, really.
One thought equivalent to less than a single proton in mass
NASA: Bring on the asteroid, so we can chuck a fridge at it
Blighty's Department for Culture, Media & Sport gets 'digital' rebrand
Shock: NASA denies secret child sex slave cannibal colony on Mars
Tick-tick... boom: Germany gives social media giants 24 hours to tear down hate speech
Robots will enable a sustainable grey economy
a generation who inhabit a world where work is almost never backbreaking drudgery and almost always meaningful
Are all the dustbin men (and women), shelf stackers, cleaners, construction workers, care assistants etc from a different generation? is working in a fast food restaurant a "meaningful" experience?
Re: How can a car-based future be long term sustainable?
but shipping around a 100kg person in a 2000kg car every day just to go to work or to buy stuff is idiotic. That's a problem decent public transport can solve cheaper and better
My nearest bus stop is a mile away. My nearest supermarket is 20 miles away. Even if there were regular buses (and not the two a day during the week that we have now) explain to me how I should do my weekly shopping without a car.
Did you know? Today is International Asteroid Day! Wouldn't it be amazing if one were to...
US Senators want Kaspersky shut out of military contracts
Modern Micron maestro Mehrotra marches merrily, maintains megahit masterplan
Virus (cough, cough, Petya) goes postal at FedEx, shares halted
Hot news! Combustible Galaxy Note 7 to return as 'Galaxy Note FE'
HMS Windows XP: Britain's newest warship running Swiss Cheese OS
Researchers blind autonomous cars by tricking LIDAR
Re: One day the goverment will update this crap
This was relevant when we were driving Austin Allegros and Morris Minors, it's like those 50 MPH bends on motorways*. It's time they were updated.
55metres at 60mph is the distance calculated to be safe for the broad range of vehicles on the road.
Yes, you could probably reduce it for modern cars with vented disks and low-profile tyres, in perfect mechanical order, but there's still an awful lot of vehicles on the roads which will not be able to stop in that distance, so a safe margin based on an average is better.
I would be prepared to bet that well over 50% of private cars on Britain's roads at this moment have one or more defects which will have a detrimental effect on their stopping distance, whether that be worn tyres, under-inflated tyres, worn or loose suspension bushes, faulty shock-absorbers, worn brake pads, etc, etc.
Very few car owners today do any maintenance on their cars, and most only fix things when they fail the MOT.
Google hit with record antitrust fine of €2.4bn by Europe
Re: Erm
Google doesn't owe anyone anything, it's up to the consumer to make a choice as to whether to use Google's search engine or not.
Indeed for all users of Microsoft Windows, if they use Google it is because they have changed the default search engine available to them, and must therefore be by choice.
Working in maintenance? Stop reading, we need you in the server room
Could this be that fewer and fewer companies, in any sphere, consider maintenance to be anything other than a cost centre. It seems that corporate culture nowadays is not to carry out maintenance, but simply repair or replace things when they break.
It appears to be impossible to instil the idea that regular maintenance will prolong the life of machinery, computers, roads or railways, and therefore will reduce costs long term.
UK's Ministry of Fun considers what to tell social media firms about online bullying
Re: Get the popcorn
Same way as here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/27/telegram_warned_by_russian_regulator_roskomnadzor/
Umm, but isn't that a Russian company, being warned by the Russian government?
AFAIK the UK regulator, like the Russian regulator, has no binding power over companies based outside their respective countries.
Tremble in fear, America, as Daesh-bags scrawl cyber-graffiti on .gov webpages no one visits
Games rights-holders tell ZX Spectrum reboot firm: Pay or we pull titles
Blighty's first aircraft carrier in six years is set to take to the seas
WannaCrypt blamed for speed camera reboot frenzy in Australia
@Vic,
Yes, but that's your choice, not a requirement. and as CrazyOldCatMan says it would be highly unusual to run Linux on top of a Windows hypervisor on any piece of equipment like a speed camera.
Besides, if you consider how she phrased it, it would seem to suggest she believes that the Windows operating system is an integral part of Linux:
Even the Linox (sic) system still uses a Windows operating system underneath it.
SpaceX nails two launches and barge landings in one weekend
UK parliamentary email compromised after 'sustained and determined cyber attack'
Re: 2FA
I think others have hit the nail on the head with our parliamentarians being too important to be bothered with trivialities such as 2FA.
Well, I don't. If you use an email client, the last thing you want is a text, phone call or other 2FA process every time the client connects to the server.
As far as I know this is not an attack on a web based mail account we are talking about, it is repeated authentication attempts against a server using SMTP, IMAP or other mail protocol. It would be most unusual to have 2FA on that sort of connection.
UK and Ecuador working on Assange escape mechanism
Fasthosts' week to forget: 4-day virtual server summer bummer
'No decision' on Raytheon GPS landing system aboard Brit aircraft carriers
Re: EM noise
And just a further rant, in addition to a lack of carrier based AWACS, the lack of cats and traps also means that you can't use carrier based tankers, so your strike aircraft are limited to relying on land based tankers which are big, cumbersome and a prime target for enemy action.
The highest fuel consumption of a fully armed carrier strike aircraft is the initial take-off and climb to its operational ceiling.
Previously, for both the US and UK navies, normal practice would be to launch your carrier-based tankers (for the US they would be Lockheed S3 Vikings, or latterly FA18 Super Hornets, the Royal Navy used to use Sea Vixens or Buccaneers), then you would launch your strike aircraft, and they would carry out an air-to-air refuelling before setting off for the target.
With the new British carriers, you can't do that, so either the strike aircraft are limited to the range of the fuel they have left after take-off, or they have to rendezvous with a land based tanker, which will normally be (in the UK) an Airbus A330 or A400, which will have to have flown from a land base out to where the carrier is operating.
You do have to wonder if any admirals actually had an input into the decision making process.
Re: EM noise
@I ain't Spartacus
This is why you have AWACS aircraft on your carrier as well...
Strangely enough the admirals do tend to have thought of this basic stuff already...
Except that they can't launch or recover AWACS aircraft from the nice new carriers, strictly helicopters only, (with reduced range and endurance) so maybe the admirals thought of the basics, but MOD decided it didn't matter.
Queen's speech announces laws to protect personal data
Tesla's driverless car software chief steps down
US voter info stored on wide-open cloud box, thanks to bungling Republican contractor
Tesla death smash probe: Neither driver nor autopilot saw the truck
Re: Right, $50 of bars will stop a 4000lb car going 74mph.
What about ride height issues, especially in places like the US where trailers have to roll over railroad track bumps where they can get caught?
I'm quite sure that any bumps in US roads are Yuge, compared to in all the European countries where side impact bars are mandatory.
It doesn't seem to be a problem anywhere else.