* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25246 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

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IBM says it's built the world's first 2nm semiconductor chips

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: They won't run out of integers

"So they can either start counting in fractions of a nanometer, or count in picometers."

So, picometres it is then. Marketing won't stand for numbers meant to be getting smaller suddenly getting bigger, even if the signifier means it's smaller because marketing won't believe the users are clever enough to understand (because marketing don't understand, and that's their measure of consumers intelligence)

'Millions' of Dell PCs will grant malware, rogue users admin-level access if asked nicely

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

firmware update utility packages for supported platforms

So, does that mean that the devices sold in 2009 are still supported or are people still using older kit prior to some arbitrary support cut-off date being left hung out to dry?

Spent Chinese rocket stage set to make an uncontrolled return to Earth

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Not uncommon

An early prototype of a space elevator?

Not so fast, SpaceX: $3bn NASA Moon landing contract blocked by rivals' gripes

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The complaint is more that only SpaceX was selected

"They are complaining that only SpaceX got an award."

Good point. How many landers do they need? Even if it's ok to "compete", would NASA even want more than one lander from competing companies? Was there competition last time around?

Philanthropist and ex-Microsoft manager Melinda Gates and her husband Bill split after 27 years of marriage

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Clippy!

"I wonder how we ever manage to evolve from apes without an AppleWatch to guide us."

Hey! Don't diss the master! Digital watches were a pretty neat idea :-)

Terminal trickery, or how to improve a novel immeasurably

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Novel interference

My highest ever Space Invaders score was after a few pints. Although I suppose the ubiquitousness of those devices in pubs of a certain era meant the theory got put to a lot of testing.

So what if I pay peanuts for my home broadband? I demand you fix it NOW!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

They do have their problems. On the other hand, they have a viable space program and are the current world leaders at COVID vaccine production.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"- Phone the ISP, wait through the lie that COVID is affecting their ability to use technology (which replaces the worn-out "unusually busy at this time" lie) and the suggestion to use their unreachable website."

If the call centre is in India, then yes, COVID may well be affecting their response times at the moment.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: This is very US-specific but.....

A bit like seeing an OpenReach or VirginMedia van stuck in a traffic jam, all liveried up with slogans about high speed broadband, here in the UK

NYPD puts down $94k robot canine contract after outcry

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Well they really should have use this as community outreach than crime fighting!

"While does look like a waste of money, the arguments against it seem to be the usual emotional responses rather than the fact that it is expensive and not really any better in function than simpler cheaper machines." a real dog.

FTFY

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: It is not a dog

It's just a shaggy dog story.

Appeals court nixes online blueprint sharing ban on 3D-printed 'ghost guns'

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

WTF has this got to do with Biden? The original release of the plans dates back to 2013, then again in 2018 and the "injunction obtained in March 2020" was under Trumps watch. Clearly you are a Trumper with a very short, selective memory and no grasp of comprehension. All of the above is in the article you are commenting on. Try relaxing and allowing the red haze to lift from your eyes before commenting next time,

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why bother with 3D printing

I've always thought of a catapult as being those devices using rubber bands, load a stone or something into the "mitt", pull back and fire. A slingshot for me has always been the long leather strap with a "mitt" in the middle that you swing around your head and, at the hopefully right moment, you let loose of one end of the strap so it opens and the missile flies out. The sort of contraption usually shown in illustrations of the David and Goliath story.

Then again, it may depend on where you lived when over here. Kids always seem to be using or inventing terms for things, mis-using terms, or simply don't (yet) know that their "invention" already exists and has a name :-) (After all, just look at the "kids" in the IT industry today, constantly re-inventing stuff and giving new names to stuff we've known about for decades :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why bother with 3D printing

"a slingshot (catapult to you Brits)."

eh, what? A slingshot and a catapult are different things. Or do you use slingshot for both items?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why bother with 3D printing

"So, why have these instances drastically increased under the guy who wants to control guns?"

Four years of Trump?

As for stabbings, taking the overall murder rate into account and not just shootings, the US STILL comes out higher than pretty much every other comparable country.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

Re: Why bother with 3D printing

But are you allowed to replace used ones with unused ones easily and at will? Or is that 15 bullets to last you your entire life?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why bother with 3D printing

"No, of course not. They have then 2nd Ammendment that gives them the goddam right to own and use guns even if they are idiots."

My wife was watching some US TV program or other the other day. Some sort auction of abandoned storage units. One contained a piece of field artillery. Up on the screen popped a message stating that this 35mm anti-tank artillery unit was legal to own and operate by civilians in the State of Tennessee. Why FFS?!?!?

Streaming mad: EC charges Apple with abuse of dominance, distorting competition in Spotify case

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: No, no store allows it

Yes, supermarkets have quite a bit of power over their suppliers. Product placement for example. Is your product at eye level in a high footfall area of the store? Or is it on the bottom shelf, "hidden" in the similar product section, eg at the end furthest from the most common direction of travel? Likewise, the BOGOF offers can shift 10x more product and it's common for the supermarkets to demand that they get the product at half price or not run the offer.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: There has to be a way to balance this

"There's a reason the "freemium" model didn't exist until app stores made it possible."

PD and Shareware (like "freemium", I guess, since many Shareware titles provides extras like new features or printed documentation if/when you paid) pre-dates the app stores or even easy access to getting on line at all. Most people who had a computer at home where aware of PD and Shareware back in the day from both magazine cover disks and the multi-page adverts in the mags.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"All Stripe provide is payment processing, app stores provide:"

Doesn't matter who provides what. Apple still take a percentage of the app sales through their store. Why should they get a cut of the in-app payments, for which they provide nothing useful? Going back to Spotify, whatever their failings or alleged "pirate" activities in the past, why should Apple take a cut of peoples ongoing costs when the streaming or download data never touches the Apple servers?

UK watchdog would cease to enforce data protection law if Supreme Court sided with Google, its lawyer tells judges

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Class action

"And all the rest get a voucher, which you must run through multiple levels of redemption, bureaucratically play ping-pong and finally are instructed that your only option is to spend the voucher for services at Google."

I've heard of "vouchers" being issued as compensation in US cases. I've never heard of that ever happing in a UK case. I suspect a UK judge would not take kindly to a "damages" payment to a victim being a voucher of some value only being redeemable through the defendants sales or services division. After all, I could be a victim of Google and deserve compensation, but I never have and likely never will directly purchase anything from Google. A voucher would be useless to me.

Former Senator and one-time astronaut Bill Nelson named as NASA's new administrator

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Wait! Bill Nelson? There's only one Bill Nelson

I must admit, every time in the article he was referred to simply as "Nelson" I heard Hah Hah in my head :-)

Billions in data protection lawsuits rides on Google's last-ditch UK Supreme Court defence for Safari Workaround sueball

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I hope Google loses big time

I assume you are replying the original AC poster and not me?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I hope Google loses big time

"and they decide to quit the UK rather than pay the fine."

Sadly, there are just too many companies usi9ng Google Docs and schools using Chromebooks managed by Google services for that to be anything other than a highly destructive Pyrrhic victory.

Can't get that printer to work? It's not you. It's that sodding cablin.... oh beautiful job with that cabling, boss

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "Well Analysis - New Knowledge"

He's probably why Personnel became HR!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Time was...

The length of time it has, or might have, been going on might be a factor. The hope is that it's something new or at least recent, but are in fear of a proper investigation not only showing it's been going on under their noses for way longer, but that other "dirty washing" might be found too. That's when management start getting asked awkward questions like "why didn't you notice" and "why are your procedures not working"

Microsoft demotes Calibri from default typeface gig, starts fling with five other fonts

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"when asked to provide a photo of something for a website or whatever, have taken or obtained a suitable photo in digital form, inserted it into Word and sent me the resulting document."

Or worse, put photos into a document and then scale rather than resize to fit the page layout they want so you get a many MB document that should only be a MB or 3.

China launches first module of new, crewed, Tiangong-3 space station

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Does that mean that small dumplings are dumplinglets and not Dim Sum or Wonton?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"or are we going dark and we are all Terrans? "

Having been into SF for many, many years, and avidly reading even all the "golden age" stuff from before I was born, Terrans is a commonly used word for humans from Earth. This Johnny come lately Star Trek series using Terrans as a "bad thing" just doesn't add up or even impinge on my many memories of Terrans simply being a generic term.

Good: Water vapor signal detected for first time on distant planet. Bad: Er, we'll let one of the boffins explain

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Flame

Gas giant with a 24 hour year

I wonder how long it takes before it turns into just whatever is at the core and is no longer either gassy or a giant? That's awfully close to it's sun to have much of a life expectancy.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: So it's not a dry heat then?

"I for one am still waiting for us to find a planet that can be officially described as 'moist', if only because so many people seem to have an issue with the word."

Is that the one where they make the lemon scented napkins?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Hmm ...

Alternatively, heaped spoonful of instant in the mug followed by pouring boiling water straight from the kettle, hoping not to miss through the blurry, sleep addled eyes and brain.

Michael Collins, once the world's 'loneliest man,' is dead. If that name means little or nothing to you, read this

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Sad times

..or be in a very elliptical orbit, with no atmosphere to cause drag no matter how close to the surface the perigee is. Just so long as the perigee doesn't coincide with any mountains! I'm sure there were contingency plans to dock so long as apogee was high enough and the command module had time to dock and still get to a return orbit.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Sad times

"The number of humans to visit another world is getting smaller and that makes me sad. I hope the pioneering work Michael and others did will continue soon. RIP."

Absolutely this. It's sad how many of the early astronauts (of whatever nationality) have died since the moon landings and now will never be able to see a manned (personned??) landing again. Lets at least hope those still living get to see it again.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Well...

Yeah, but it was the trouser snake wot caused all the kerfuffle.

FCC gives SpaceX the go-ahead to drop Starlink satellite orbits by 500 kilometres or so

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The weather forecast

Cloudy with a chance of spaceballs?

UK government gives Automated Lane Keeping Systems the green light for use on motorways

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Is anyone actually asking for this?

I wonder what the Venn diagram will look like if we take self driving car owners, iPhone owners and millennials/GenZ/whatever the groups is today?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: paradigm shift

"The current shit state of electric cars could be fixed at a stroke if they were able to slope off autonomously at night to recharge somewhere sensible, and be back by dawn."

...and "rush hour" starts even earlier as all those cars leave their central charging hub to pick up their passengers with no home parking/charging, then do the same again after dropping them off at work or the shops. There may well be fewer of them if WFH become permanent for significant numbers, but the number of trips each car does will likely go up.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Lane keeping = lane hogging?

I learned some years ago that some people call Lane 1 the "lorry lane". It's taken hold so well now that some people seem to think lane 1 is only for lorries and so some car drivers don't or won't use it. I see it frequently, driving down lane 1 at 70mph then having to move over the lane 3 to pass the moron in lane 2 doing 60-65mph, then indicating back to lane 1. Even that doesn't seem to give them a hint.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: 37 MPH...

"Now imagine you've got a car doing 37 MPH in the first lane, this means you'll have trucks coming up quickly and then needing to over take it or slow down, causing congestion."

Much of the A1/A1(M) is only two lanes wide and lorries passing other lorries is already an issue when one speed limiter is set slight different to another one. Just today, on the way home, I sat behind a lorry for well over a mile as he tried to overtake another on a slight incline. He never made it. By the time we crested the hill, the "slower" one started to pick up speed again and it took another mile or so before the "quicker" lorry eventually pulled back in behind the one he tried to over take. There was a line of vehicles behind me as far as I could see in my mirrors. Probably 5 mins delay caused by just one lorry and maybe 50 or more vehicles delayed. This can happen multiple times on the two lane stretches. There are two areas going north with an extra "crawler" lane and Southbound has two areas with 7am to 7pm curfews on the out lane for anything over 7.5t (that latter has made a good difference to journey times)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Childcatcher

Re: Thought experiment

Oven ready and pre-basted?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Thought experiment

...and then start trying to avoid it. The human brain can react surprisingly quickly, almost, dare I say it, by instinct, at times of great stress.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Thought experiment

The (original) Batmobile had laser headlamps!!

(and once was old enough and I found out what lasers actually were and how the worked, realised what a stupid idea that was!!)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Cruise control / License minder

You're probably right, but I find it disconcerting to have my foot on the floor and nothing happening to the speed of the car. I also find cruise control a little uncomfortable too. I find I keep my foot hovering over the accelerator, which leads to more aches in the ankle. I have to consciously rest my foot on the floor and then feel nervous that I'm not in proper control.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: US Driving

"Luckily in UK it's difficult to get above 70mph for more than a feew miles, in fact let's be honest, the distance between towns is so short and the motorways so crowded, you are luck if you can get up 50 mph on most motorways, most days of the week, or even in the middle of the night if you use the M6."

Living North of the M62, I don't see a problem with maintaining 70mph for long periods on the motorway. The M62 itself, west of the junction with the A1 isn't fun, neither are the motorways around Manchester and up to maybe as far as Blackpool. North of there, no problem. Likewise heading into Humberside and North Linc motorways.

Maybe if WFH catches on permanently, the more rural areas might get a little busier as people from Darn; Sarf realise they can move to Northern countryside for much nicer housing and cheaper than a cupboard in the Big City.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Naysayer

To be fair, with aircraft speeds, 1000's of metres IS a near miss. Closing speed could easily be in excess of 1200mph so 1000's of metres might only be seconds apart. But of course, that is an incredibly rare occurrence and most aircraft autopilots don't take evasive action anyway. They just blare out alarms so the highly trained pilots can take over and take action.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The technology could create around 38,000 new jobs...

"The notion that computer technology in its current state can safely steer a vehicle in any but the most carefully controlled situations is nuts."

Yes, there's not all that many roads where you want a car to be partially self-driving at only 37mph for any real distance. If they were prepared to certify it (and mucho testing!!) at 70mph for motorways, I might be a tad more comfortable with the idea.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The technology could create around 38,000 new jobs...

"Could" is a versatile word.

True. It's not going to be in the car industry. These systems are not going to be after-market installed, leading to jobs. They'll be factory fitted, probably by robots, leading to...erm...fewer not more jobs as they automate as much of the manufacturing as possible.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Idiocy

Interesting stats. Sadly, meaningless without stating some absolutes like miles drive and/or numbers of Teslas on the roads in each country.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: 37MPH

Despite your downvotes, it's a point I and probably many others also noticed. It seems odd to specify a speed limit that is clearly a conversion from a "round" number of kph in an unusual mph figure. Especially when the UK has been putting of converting road signs to kph speed limits and km distance for years and is likely to keep kicking that can down the road for many years to come,

I suspect the downvotes were from people sick of hearing about Brexit, despite it affecting all our live now and for the foreseeable future.

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