Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: Eh?

"Subscription renewals have to be clearly communicated, and can't set a new minimum term contract. But antivirus companies are far from the worst offenders over subscription renewals."

Agreed

But this, from the article, "More generally, signing up for such contracts has tended to be considerably easier than getting out of them." is surely the poster-boy for unfair contracts. Clearly one side has far more power than the other, the very definition of an unfair contract. US companies in particular have been pulling stunts like this for years in jurisdictions where, unlike back home, contracts are required to have balance. They don't often fully enforce them because they don't want them tested in court, instead relying on individuals who feel powerless to simply give up without a fight.

Re: "nonlinear voltammetry"

And if it breaks down, you just need to re-route the power and reverse the polarity of the neutron flow to MacGyver a fix :-)

Re: All very well but

I'm on the road all day, every day. 2 hours is about my limit. Back when I was young and indestructible I drove 250 miles to the first and only job of the day, then booked a hotel near the next days job and drove 240 miles there, so a little short of 500 miles in one day. The first job was only less than hour from getting out the car to getting back in. But it did piss down all day, which adds to the problem :-) My only stop was the job in Norfolk. I'd never do that these days, not least because the roads are so much busier.

Re: Batteries are dead

"realistically the 400 miles range we have now is "good enough" for a days' drive..."

As "Road Warrior" that would do me, providing I can find a charger somewhere on some of the longer days. Not really an issue since I commonly stop in a motorway services and do work stuff on the way home. But, being able to afford an EV with that range is something I can't currently contemplate. Despite being an essential user, I don't get a company car, just a car allowance. It won't cover the cost of any of the current EVs with that sort of range isn't never likely to.

Yes, but wasn't that the point? Somewhere to easily fit a big auxiliary battery? Small and light, and therefore more economic for daily use with the option of a "power-up" for those rare times you need it? Paying something like £50-100 for a weeks hire of an extra battery is a lot cheaper than hiring a longer range car. I'm sure a good engineering designer could find a way. Especially if it could be made a mandated size/shape/connection.

Re: A power station at each garage ?

"Assuming that the claim is correct, charging a Tesla with a 75kWh battery in 10 minutes will require a feed of 75x6kW ie 450kW (and that is assuming no losses!!). Compared to the power consumption of a normal (petrol/diesel) garage of 10kW or less this is a huge increase."

I was reading an article about the future of EV in the UK. The claim was made that the vast majority of people drive less than 20 miles per day and they'll just need a low and slow top-up charge overnight. The article also claimed that using smart chargers means the grid can easily handle this overnight charging. How that squares with EOLing all the coal fired generation and plans to go carbon neutral, meaning cutting gas fired generation too, new nuclear being some years away, I'm less sure of.

Re: This is impressive

"And, contrary to carbon nanotubes, it looks like it will be available on the market sooner rather than later."

Almost certainly true, but the real kicker will be when and how quickly charging points can be developed, replaced or retro-fitted for the new charging method. The roll out of charging points seems to be finally gathering pace, but can they do variable voltage charging or be adjusted to do so?

"the death of all humans not in deep bunkers or space."

Hmmmm...that almost make $28m for a trip with Bezos sensible.....naaaahhhh!!!

Re: 'Too much information'

"Jachin-Boaz"

I think I may have just read that as Joan Baez and had some sort of weird discontinuity as I carried on reading :-)

Re: AN0N, lots of fuzz about ?....

And, of course, not forgetting the Bolivians and their Marching Powder. (Columbian Marching Powder also available) Those two seem to be the only ones associated with the phrase "Marching Powder".

Re: Criminality

"To a cop, everybody is a potential criminal, it'just that they haven't found what your crime is yet."

A friend of mine used to be a cop. His attitude to that sort of comment is any cop thinking that way, well, it's time to get out of the law enforcement business.

Re: Criminality

"Despite all the massive drugs busts you read about, it doesn't really seem to impact the supply lines at all, people can still get them."

From what I've seen/heard/read, and not being user or have any links to the drugs trade, it appears there are significant price fluctuations in the periods after major drug confiscations. A ton or 3 of "pure" Bolivian Marching Powder coming in from South America is a LOT of dealer bags on the street. I'm thinking particularly of the UK here where the importation methods are little more limited than some other countries, what with being an island and all.

Re: One Time Pads.

"But you are right as rain about the rest of it. If you want to communicate securely, don't use cell phones."

Yes, but they are just sooooo convenient. And crims are arrogant, assuming they won't get caught. The bosses in particular have layers of underlings to give plausible deniability. They don't care if the underlings get caught so long as the money keeps flowing. Some minor inconvenience because some underling were caught is just a business expense.

It's really not that different to how large corporations operate. "Won't someone rid me of this turbulent priest?"

Re: 2025? That long?

Yes, any exodus, small or large, for home users, I suspect would be to either Apple or Chromebooks because they heard of that. Most have not heard of Linux at all, maybe some of the bigger "brands" with "funny sound names" like Ubuntu. Businesses will simply stump up in most cases because they short term investment in switching will be too great for them. A long term slow bleed seems more affordable than a sudden haemorrhage.

"they will be charging for the next version...."

One fees or monthly/annual subscription? My bet is on the latter.

And not forgetting they have form for pushing updates that nag you about not upgrading from previous versions. Buy a new version/subscribe to the new service or see a black desktop with a dire warning message about no future updates and the massive security risk you now at.

"See Solaris 2.x -> 7.x and Firefox 5.x onwards."

Totally agree. Except Joe and Josephine Average actually do seem to notice version numbers in at least some cases. Hey, mate, you got version 5 of firefox. It must be out of date because I got Chrome 28!

But is your UEFI box *capable* of Secure Boot? Maybe that's what he meant. Legacy machines that don't even have a Secure Boot option might be what will eventually be no longer supported. They've not yet made Secure Boot mandatory.

Re: No pr0n without diesel

No, the mechanical aid is for when you get tired of the manual method and/or to prevent the forming of blisters and friction burns. Those hand cranks are exhausting!

Re: Customer Services???

"Which, at that time was forbidden by the Covid regulations."

Which branch of Tescos and where is it? I don't recall any supermarkets being closed due to COVID. Or was the customer service desk classed as a "non-food aisle" and closed in Welsh branches? :-)

Re: A shame, but only to be expected

Yes, and they probably looked at a map and decided those who need/want to be in a call centre and not work from home only have a little over half an hours drive from Bury down to Warrington. Apart the trip including the bit of the M60 guaranteed to have long delays on it every day in rush hour.

Re: Wage theft

"but because it's a corporate decision, nobody gets prosecuted? One law for them, another for the rest of us."

It's funny how corporations are "people" when it comes to claiming "rights" but never seem to be "people" when it might disadvantage them. All the rights, none of the responsibility.

Me too! I'm sick of these lazy bastards and their cheap shitty fucking surveys masquerading as fucking research. Cunts!

Re: rule nr. 4

"Depends on the size of your glass"

I remember the old days when you could buy a glass of wine in a bar and there's be about 5 glasses per bottle. That's about the same as the glasses we use at home. These days, it seems the glasses in the pubs are so large, if you order two glasses of wine, they give you the bottle because there's barely a 1/2 glass left in it.

So, the question is, what do these figures mean when they talk about a "glass" of wine.

"Fortunately I got a really good BT engineer who fixed it, put me on a different set of terminal blocks that were not rusty and even set the exchange to retrain the line."

Or he was aware of the internal discussion re a "known fault" and knew how to fix it, one way or the other.

I've been doing break/fix for years and "known faults" are never communicated to customers until the shit hits the fan. And that can take years while the blame is apportioned and bounced around, re-apportioned and bounced around again and again.

Re: "become completely digital"

Yes, there'll always be an option to go collect a paper form from the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard, which you then fill in and post to the relevant office.

Re: barely delivering a lorry.

Or, more likely, Del Boy.

Re: backdoor identity card

Unless the only utility bills you get are "e-bills", ie an unauthenticated PDF anyone can edit and print out.

Re: The PETs inspired me.

"The PET was the first computer I touched. "

Same here! Although the first I ever used was some mini or mainframe at the local university. We ad an ASR33 teletype at school and an acoustic modem. We'd create our programmes offline on coding sheets, check them as best we could for errors and then punch the tapes. The teacher would stay back to use the acoustic coupler and phone after 6pm when call rates were cheaper. Sometimes, some of us would also stay back to play games at cheap phone rates too. She'd let us play Lunar Lander on the Teletype for a max of half an hour. Not exactly real-time gaming though. Type your thrust value and a few seconds later the teletype would tell you your current altitude and velocity and wait for the next thrust adjustment. Then I discovered it was written in BASIC and I printed a listing out. I learned so much from pouring over that.

Later on, we got a PET 4004 and I was spending every spare minute in that room and if availbale ought to work on this new PET. And the sound effect device I built years ago,

Just looked more closely. It's a real PET in hardware terms. Wow! I remember when I went to Uni a year later, they ad a PET lad with MuPETs, a device to allow 4 PETs to share a dual drive floppy unit and printer.

That was fun!