Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: Biometric password

I think I should have used <sarc> tags or maybe a joke icon.

Re: Communicating with only obscenities?

"Sounds like my brother in law, every second word begins with F, no matter what the subject."

I used to work with someone like that. We once bet he couldn't last through a 15 minute tea break without saying fuck or some derivative. He lasted 30 seconds. And that was because it took him 25 seconds to get the cup of tea before sitting down and opening his mouth :-)

Re: Future Gazing

"but I'd be hard pushed to find anything to read the tapes"

The Mk.1 eyeball can read paper tapes. Historians have learned to translate "lost" languages over the years with very little to work with. And paper tape is probably the most resilient storage medium if stored properly.

Re: What's to stop...

"second" time?

(Upvoted for the sentiment, if not the factual accuracy :-))

Re: Design software ?

"Is the US government stupid enough to believe that ANYONE wins in a nuclear (or biological) war ?"

There are some in the US that think COVID-19 is the first step in a biological war.

Sad, innit?

Re: Not a scientist

"Cheddarium"

I think you mean Cheddite, as discovered by Harry Harrison, used for turning a Boeing 747 into a hyperspace jumping spaceship.

Re: I would have thought...

Exhaust pollution, noise pollution. Both have to be taken into account. There could be fines incurred for "hot-rodding" a take off unnecessarily.

"I don't doubt they'd want to keep the US out as well."

The US has offered $millions in grants and aid because they very much want to keep their airbase at Thule and don't want a Chinese presence anywhere near them.

Re: electric cars

And he grows the crops most likely to earn him top dollar. If bio-fuel crops are earning more than bread flour from wheat, I assume he'll naturally gravitate to growing more oil producing crops such as Rapeseed. Or is he being sensible and keeping a diverse crop in anticipation of future market fluctuations? As an independent, I'd guess the latter. The big corporate farms will more likely be run by accountants.

Re: There's a simple solution that would never be adopted

Yup, and that's exactly how Amazon pays no tax. They spend all the profits on R&D, ergo, there are no profits.

Re: It's not clear exactly what the new body will do

We know a song about that!

Bing Crosby et al from A Connecticut Yankee At King Arthurs Court.

Re: Oxymoron alert!

For some odd reason, I read Federal as Feudal.

Re: Minions Finally Lose

"11,500 lines of code which, to put it in perspective for a non-techie, at 30 lines a page* means 380-odd pages."

60 lines per page would be a more reasonable number. The real question as to whether 190 pages is a significant number is when you take that code as a proportion of the entire "work".

A million grains of sound may seem like a lot, but if you take that many grains from a beach you'll not be able to discern the difference.

That reminds me of Radar in M*AS*H. He posted a Jeep back home, one part at a time from "unaccountedable" inventory :-)

Re: A safe connection to the Internet

"Companies that build devices that connect to the Internet, normally invest effort in making them secure, but then features are added and independently updated - resulting is this type of problem."

That's a common feature across many areas of industry, especially the many service industries. There's always money for new stuff and not enough for maintenance. Making new stuff is cool. Fixing broken stuff is drudgery.

Re: And of course people are bloody minded ...

"Yes, computers are a force multiplier."

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world. - Archimedes

I don't think anyone could disagree that computers have "moved the world" :-)

Re: Never mind the width feel the quality

Thanks. I forgot to include nights :-)

Re: A fine headline

I read the headline out to my wife. Her response? "Glow in the dark poop?"

Re: One Good Thing

"fined for not notifying the affected customers"

Yes, multiple customers at risk of having their cards maxxed out for 22 fricken days!!! Full card details including CVV exposed for those poor suckers.

Hopefully, this is not the end of the story and further fines will be incoming for Booking based on other GDPR violations.

"Not quite sure what the point of an inflatable habitat is."

A single, large unit that doesn't need a massively large rocket to get it there. It took a Saturn V to get SkyLab up.

Remember, it's not just a balloon. It's also got rigid sections for things like port holes, mounts for machinery to be attached, airlocks etc. It's all carefully folded almost like Origami in reverse so as it inflates all the relevant bits move in the right direction at the right time.

Thinking about it, with SpaceX multiple launch of 1st stages (their current record is 9 launches and landing with a single 1st stage), they could probably put multiple inflatables up which can be docked to each other as well all the gubbins that needs to go inside. I just got an image of a string of sausages. Piiiiiigs in Spaaaaace!!

The downside is that everything has to fit through an airlock.

Re: We've switched to LTE

"Honestly, OpenReach have no such plans that they're able to share with us."

Depending on how high up the totem pole you can get to ask your questions, it's worth specifically excluding the word "plan" in your questions and using words like "intentions", "road map" and so on. "plan" can have specific legal meanings when discussing business that could lead to legal implications when said "plans" don't materialise.

Re: Another idea

Already been done, and that one is street legal :-)