Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: There is another scenario where both scenarios would have been correct

"Taties in yer socks!" Not heard that since I were a nipper!

The boundaries ofGateshead include quite a large rurarl area and small villages.

The nickname "Peelers" for the first official Police Force dates back to...erm....the first official Police Force formed by Robert Peel. I take it from your comment that the term is still in use in NI?

Re: The coup explained in 5 easy steps

Yet with the Republican portion of this plot, the ten day 'audit' that moves the certification back to around the 17th. Their circling of the Capitol building and only allowing in their Republican group to vote, *WOULD* permit the coup."

You kep saying this, but how could the vote be legal? Sure, a quorum is a quorum is a quorum if some members choose not to attend or vote. But you're talking about an armed insurrection to deliberatly prevent those who may oppose from attending or voting. No matter the result of this insurreectionist vote you keep going on about, no one else is ever going to recognise it as valid.

Re: The beginnings of space industry, then ?

Project Orion. We just need clean nuclear bombs first.

Re: An elephant in the room

Won't they need special permission to store toxic waste?

"I think you are right there. Let's not forget that had Trump long ago accepted the simple fact that he lost fair and square, then nothing of this would have happened, but instead he has gone on repeating his wild lies constantly."

And not forgetting that Trump, even with his massive ego, knew there was a distinctly likely possibility that he would lose and was stoking the conspiracy fires about rigged elections long before the elections even started. ie if he won, then it would have been a fair election but if he lost, then "clearly" it would be because of rigging. He repeated that many times in the run up to the election.

Re: A Failed Hitler

"The Covid deaths (~Mao starved his people with a food export drive + inability to admit his own mistake), are projected to be ~700K or so from Trump."

Yes. COVID-19 deaths in the USA currently equate to a 9/11 death toll every 13 or so hours. That's a sobering thought.

Re: won't be there

"They had a management change about 10 years ago and cleaned up, it spoilt it....."

I wonder if that was related to a visit by the Food Hygiene Police? :-)

Re: won't be there

Assuming he did decide to fly over to Scotland instead of going tp the inauguration, would it it be a one-way flight on Air Force One? After all, he'd not be President after, what? early evening in Scotland on the 20th? Would Air Force One and all the attendant support teams and vehicles have to remain with Trump in Scotland until Biden is sworn in? Would Biden then have to wait for The Beast to return from Scotland before he can get his ride to the White House?

"That way the Republicans will have to deal with Trump taking away a large swathe of the GOP's cash cows when he forms his own party"

I could see a decently large, national 3rd Party being a useful force for good in the USA. Just not if it's a "breakaway Trump Party". Having a smaller 3rd Party to split the vote, forcing the big boys to be more conciliatory and have to get support from either the opposition or the new "minnows" might help remove some of the incredibly divisive partisanship we see today. From the outside, it looks pretty much like no cares what is going to be done by the governing party in the USA, so long as it's not the other party doing it. ie very much as if people are being asked to vote against something, never for something. "Don't vote $Party, they are evil" instead of "here's why we are better than $Party, vote for us". I see the UK going down a similar path, but no where near as far as the US has. Probably because we have other influential parties so it's not a given that one party will get an outright majority.

Re: “likely to incite or produce such action.”

"I'd actually like to know when Giuliani will be disbarred for *his* actions in all this, they've only focused on Trump."

A coalition of over a thousand lawyers have already demanded he be disbarred.

Re: An elephant in the room

"Just a little bit of help from the Soviet Union. Probably over 10 million dead. And, for example, numbers of tanks that are astonishing."

FWIW, many British and American tanks were sent to Russia too. I forget the figures now, but a significantly large percentage of Russian tanks, vehicles and arms were British and American supplied. I seem to recall of figure of about one quarter of main battle tanks in the Red Army were imported The Brits alone exported enormous amounts of war material to Russia.

Ah, here's a Wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanks_in_the_Soviet_Union#Lend_Lease_Tanks

Also of note was that Russia gave the Germans, prior to WW2, access to large training areas where they could develop and train with their tanks in violation of the 1919 Versailles Peace Treat.

The world is an ever changed tangle of alliances and enemies.

Re: An elephant in the room

Unlike a wartime recession, we don't have near full employment. And people are still and will continue to lose their jobs. I think you are mainly correct, but it will take longer than we think or expect, to recover.

Re: An elephant in the room

I wonder where the Trump Presidential Library will be located and what will be in it? Considering is disdain for books and "book learnin'".

Re: Proof reader

"the side effect of "how did I miss so many before I noticed?!")"

I used to teach IT to students back in the days when we were still using 8-bit computers, so far back that teaching "keyboard skills" was part of the course. Assessing and proof-reading is HARD. There's only so much that can be automated, especially when the layout, eg spaces and tabs, are as important in the test as the actual letters and numbers. As you say, you often see what you expect to see, not necessarily what is really there. Even more so when you are on page 4 of the 20th almost identical submission of the proof-reading session.

Re: The software isn't the main problem

"Such though appears to be very much the same quandary which faces the terrestrial motor vehicle trade too with their autonomous robot driving vehicles ferrying passengers asleep and/or inattentive at the wheel."

Auto-braking sensors, systems that have been in production and on the road, still don't work properl to the extent that in some cases, roads have been changed to suit the systems rather than the systems being changed to take all situations into account.

Somerset cattle grid mistaken for wall by car sensors

"One question--Why is the US the most desired country for those seeking immigration? "

Probably the historic welcome the US used to give immigrants, the oppotunities that used to be there and that they are coming from places where they don't get the really see what it's really like before they get there.

The same happens in the UK. Why else would so many refugees and migrants be trying to illegally cross the Channel when, to do so, they have passed through at least two, possibly many more, EU countries to get here. "The streets are paved with gold" syndrome can be quite strong in some places when deciding where to go. (Other reasons too, eg ex-colonies, so leaving a changed or poor country to go to the "mother country" where things might be a bit more familiar such as their 2nd language being English. Similar happens with people leaving French ex-colonies, which probably doesn't apply to US immigrants)

Re: Rent a mob

"The American right just look like a bunch of bonkers fantasists to us over here,"

Which "right"? The about as far right as the Tories Dems or the even further right Republicans? I find it laughable that Trumpers (not, NOT Republicans in general, just Trumpers) see the Dems as being about to bring in "socialism". The Trumpers have no idea what "socialism" is if they think the right leaning Dems are socialists :-)

Re: Dear Redmond

Al;l these new "add-ons" being baked into the default install is going to eventually lead to more anti-trust situations. MS, like Apple, Facebook et al are taking things others have produced as 3rd party add-ons, often commercial offerings, and are effectively killing the market by baking their own offerings into the OS/App. Monopoly anyone?

Sounds like going back to "town gas" but cleaner. Local production and relatively short term storage. Gasometers in every town.

Re: Future proofing size constraints

"And it's always going to be tricky. Use bigger block sizes and you end up with wasted space for small files as described."

And especially not forgetting that back then, a "program" often came with many, many tiny "support" files not wrapped up in DLLs. eg multiple .ICO files. There was often an enormous amount of wasted space in the cluster "slack space". Windows itself had 1000's of small support files, wasting significant space on large drives. I remember spending many hours optimising my own system at home by trying to get rid of as much of the smaller cruft as possible and trying to balance cluster size against speed, usability and waste.

"I've often thought that quite early on the whole internet community should have adopted the principle that countries abide by openness principles or they get cut off."

Who gets to be on that committee? Who gets to decide who is banned? How much influence will lobbyists, blackmailers, governments with the ability to apply personal, financial or life threatening pressure have?

It's a nice though, but I have little faith in peoples altruism or their ability remain independent.