Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: I suspect there's some software involved

"This stunt might be a bit tricky for a human to carry off because our slow reaction time would dominate any visual feedback we had from the tunnel sides and floor."

You could say the same about car drivers on normal two lane roads with a 60mph speed limit. That's a closing speed of 120mph against oncoming traffic mere feet away with just a white painted line, possibly faded, to offer guidance. And yet people do that every day without even thinking about and mostly don't have accidents.

"Guess that wouldn't have also got the record for first take-off from inside a tunnel though."

Wasn't that done during WWII? ISTR the Germans having at least one place where they flew out from a tunnel in a mountain. Or am I getting confused with some war film or other?

Re: Precedent set?

"An actual turing-test-passing-self-cognizant-hopefully-its-not-skynet-but-obeys-asimovs-three-laws AI?"

Shirley Asimovs Three Laws, by definition, make it a slave, not a free person and so will attract Robots Rights lawyers aplenty :-)

Re: "Those are mighty big questions"

"We are the MS-Borg. You will be upgraded. Please press Ok, Cancel or "X" to continue."

FTFY

Re: An alternative

"This sounds more like a philosophical challenge than a legitimate grouse about patenting these specific inventions."

It sounds to me like he's just trying to big up his supposed AI. Maybe he's found a way to analyse the Patent database and find "gaps" where his algorithm can then automatically file patents based on the results or some other method of automating Patent generation such that he can coin it in if he can get legal backing for his "AI" claims.

There's a huge difference between a person following or stalking an individual and Bluetooth beacons all over a city, possibly many from the same company, "knowing" exactly which shops you go into, when and how often.

The fact that so few people realise this tracking can be done, and is happening, because "It never crossed my mind." is the worrying thing. This information is out there, it even makes the mainstream news every now and then. but it seems most people simply don't care enough to remember that until someone actually confronts them with cold, hard data. Simply telling someone that they can be tracked by BT, or online cookies, javascripts, off-site links to "assets" etc., etc., etc., and they might just possibly agree before it disappears from their mind again. Although it's more likely that in those circumstances, the vast majority will simply not believe or think it doesn't matter.

And yet, what we do online can and does come back to haunt some. Just the other week, a guy standing for election was lambasted by the opposition for some unsavoury stuff he posted on Twitter in 2010, 11 years ago! Worse, he's only 26 now, so he was a hormonal 15 year old boy at the time of his "infringements" and quite clearly no longer holds those same view. (FWIW, he's standing for a party I really don't like, so I'm not defending his politics at all here.)

Re: Darwin Award Nominees?

Depends. Many people can listen to music without being distracted much at all from what they are doing. It's just background noise. The problem isn't so much the distraction as the severe reduction in external audio cues.

After all, some people prefer to work, code, do homework (looking at you teens!) with loud music blasting out :-)

Personally, when I'm driving, I listen to audio books. But I also know how to prioritise my awareness. Many's the time I've had to rewind a chapter and listen again because I've completely lost the plot by watching more intently on where I'm going. It also adds something to my awareness when driving long distances on motorways where it's easy to get bored and distracted when driving in silence.

Re: Radio days

Thanks for that.

"As far as I recall there's only Classic FM which is a nationwide commercial station,"

My SatNav has a Radio attachment that picks up traffic info. AFAIK, that signal is carried by Classic FM.

Re: Radio days

I have RDS/Traffic Announcements on all the time because I drive a lot. It's not that unusual for the announcement to not be properly timed to match the signal broadcast to tell your radio to tune to it. From experience, I'd say it's purely cock-ups and timing errors on the part of the studio. The BBC went through a phase a few years ago where the Travel Announcements always seemed to start before the RDS TA signal was sent and then run on for a minute or two afterwards so you often missed the first part of the TA which would be the major roads. Nowadays, they seem to get it mainly right, but not all the time.

Lead times on all laptops and tablets are currently longer than usual, but 12 weeks instead of two days and no information from the customer support bods is taking the piss. Especially since Lenovo will have known about the long lead times before you even ordered it. I've seen lead times on some spares reported in the few to many months ranges, although do turn up quicker than that, usually, which indicates they are not only aware of the problem but also have little real idea of when stuff will become available. I image the production lines for their business grade kit has the highest priority for any parts that might be hard to get or or part of a more fragile supply chain.

Re: Response time

Ah, the ambiguity of language. Specifying a 45 minute response also requires a definition of "response".

Re: Gotcha

Must have been the early days before they put cameras in them :-)

Re: First Launch? And with cargo?

"Seems strange to load up on cargo when they haven't actually had a successful launch."

They usually put a dummy load in to simulate the mass of what a normal production flight will do. In this case some of that dummy load was a (probably free) ride for a university experiment. I didn't see any mention of a customer payload that the uni experiment was attached to, so I'm assuming from that the uni experiment was the entire payload.

Re: "the choice of either aborting the flight"

"Being grounded after the fact is negligible, PR-wise, compared to the absolute shitstorm that Branson would have been subject to if the mission had aborted."

AKA "it's easier to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission" :-)

"a race between three two rich people"

...and the race was for second place. SpaceX have already lofted "passengers" way higher :-)

Re: Usage

An excellent point. After all, it only seems to be in the US that the word "liberal" is treated as an insult ot swear word. I'm sure there are a liberal amount of other words in their list that also have no "bad" meanings in most of the rest of the world too. I'm guessing the Liberal Democrat Party won't be using GitHib to host their apps either.

Re: That's nothing!

"our old UK washing machine.... I put it in the sink,"

That's either a very small washing machine or a very large sink! I don't think I could lift our washing machine high enough to get it in the sink on my own, even if it would fit :-)

Re: 0wn3d

There are few if any countries that don't have a similar law. Wording and enforcement may vary from country to country, but the law is there in some form or another.

"Also, 'metre' and 'fiber' is making this sentence difficult for me to look at."

Metre, the unit of measurement is correct across the world, except in the US, as opposed to meter, a device to show a measurement, which is spelled the same all over the world (excepting those places which may use a different, local language word for meter). Other meaning and uses of the meter also apply, but no other meaning is ascribed to the word Metre.

Likewise, fibre and fiber are the same, the entire English speaking word spells is as Fibre, apart from, you guessed it, the US, who spell it Fiber :-)

"Assuming the artist rendition in the article is accurate, the sail increases the footprint of the satellite by about 3 or 4 times. 3-4x is still 3-4x, no matter how negligible the initial risk is."

That's true, but if you are within 2-3 rocket body diameters of another object, you're already seriously of course!

Re: "applied two kilograms of hermetal along all the seams"

"I do risky things but I would not put metal putty on a hot water boiler. I'm glad it has worked for you but that smacks of catastrophic failure."

He said tank, not boiler, so I'd assume from that it's an unpressurised, insulated storage vessel, not a pressurised boiler.

Re: "British Association for Shooting and Conservation"

"Makes you wonder how nature managed before firearms were invented"

That would probably be back when this sceptered isle had actual large carnivores like wolves and bears and a proper natural and balanced food chain. Then those bloody Neanderthal moved in!

Re: Storage

"90% of the UK is rural."

As evidenced by the map image in the article showing the spread of gun owners. It's like a negative image of the satellite photos showing light pollution. The dark areas are the urban areas where legal gun ownership is negligible,

Re: section 58

* you won't be home if they want to actually steal your firearm

If it's properly secured, that may take some time and possibly be a little noisy

* you WILL be home and will use your firearm(s) on THE CRIMINAL (I would)

If it's properly secured, you probably won't have time to get it out, load it and use it. On the other hand, if that's what they came for, then you and your family being there is just more reason to do as they say and give them any weapons and ammunition you have, nice and quietly.

It might be interesting to view crime stats later to see if criminals avoid the "firearm house" in favor of the one nearby with all of the lights off and an expensive entertainment system inside...

See above, it depends on what that specific criminal is looking for.

Re: No surprises here

Yeah, I'd nor thought of it like that before. If the only meat I eat is source from vegan animals, eg cows, pigs, sheep, chickens etc, that makes me a vegan too!