Posts by John Brown (no body) 25368 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"This is why they'd take a dim view of gaming the system, it would be as unthinkable as useing a radio controlled golf ball to steer a putt into the cup."
No, it's more like inventing a new golf club that make s a hole in one far more likley while still being within the posted rules. It may break the spirit of the rules and be "unfair" in the minds of many, but still be completely legal.
"NASA's SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellite)"
Something the US is very, very good at (on the whole) Acronyms/Bacronyms. Do US orgs and corps actually have people with the specific job of coming up with them? Is there a graduate course one can attend with the aim of having that job title?
To guess what the OS or anything else might be. That's a BIOS reported error so it could be any OS, none of which are to blame in this case. Well, some blame may be passed to the OS if the OS didn't see the thermal trip coming and shutdown safely. It's likely the OS was killed with extreme prejudice by the BIOS forcing a reboot rather than the OS seeing the temp rise and doing a clean shutdown.
"Within 2m for more than 15 mins" has been the "rule" since lockdown. It constantly surprises me how many people still have not understood that basic message. The app should not be warning you of people you might have been near for 60 seconds or so. If you are pressing pedestrian crossing buttons after 100's of strangers, then you need to consider your risk level and mitigations. Like maybe wearing gloves or carrying wet anti-bacterial wipes. Same applies to anything that others may be touching before you.
What gets my goat is the blatancy with which they claim that keeping a list of where you have been is "privacy preserving".
Until we see it and get a chance to see how it works, the only "facts" we have at the moment are that the app stores the data on the phone and then checks for alerts from a central database. Your phone then lets you know if any of the places you've been are in that list. It doesn't send your data anywhere. Considering the outcry over privacy (rightly, IMHO), I can't see any reason why the QR code thing should work in the same way.
So, instead of "Oh Noes! Privacy", let's wait for the evidence which may or may not prove your fears.
"Test more people, yet more positive results. "
While both true and a Trumpism, the rate of positive tests is also increasing, irrespective of the numbers of tests being carried out. That's typical of people who are in denial and how Trump operates constantly. Carefully picking just enough "truth" to make statements sound plausible that are demonstrably wrong.
As for your accusation of the conflation of "cases" and "positive results", anyone not a denier, especially in the medical profession, will tell you that the number of cases is highly likely to be one or more orders of magnitude more than current testing would indicate. I'm sure even you must have heard of asymptomatic infections, let alone those who get it relatively mildly, most of whom probably don't get tested. Certainly the vast majority of asymptomatic case don't get tested unless they are in a job where regular testing is required.
"On leaving, the few people ahead of me ignored the sanitiser at the exit too."
FWIW, I don't either. I use my own before I go in, same on the way out and always use anti-bacterial wipes on the trolley handle and to use the coin slot key thing. I also have a second anti-bacterial wipe for opening fridge or freezer doors etc, keep wiping my hands after touching stuff. I've seen others do the same.
Having said all that, I know what you mean. There are people who are still not taking things seriously. I followed a guy in a motorway services the other day. No mask for him or his wife. He also walked back out of the toilets after pissing and didn't wash his hands either. Twat!
"Somehow I think I might have worked out where I've been for myself."
That's probably true for some people, maybe for a lot of people, but I can't say for sure exactly which shops I was in last week. There's the "usual suspects" I go to every week, but did I go in the local butchers, bakers or candlestick makers? Or the fruit shop last week? Might have. Maybe not.
"Paper based contact tracing is by far the best as it maintains anonymity as much as possible"
Interestingly, I went into a council building the other day. They had a sign-in sheet requesting name, full postcode and phone number at the main reception. Considering the strict and often overzealous application of GDPR by local councils, the sheet was not covered in any way, the data not protected from prying eyes, ie the people being asked to sign in. A full set of personal details on view to everyone.
"I eventually had to stack the disk drives to the side of the system unit."
That's what you were supposed to do. Stacking the drives side by side and then the screen on top was just because it looked "cool" in the adverts. It was never a good idea to place a CRT on top of the floppy drives. Apple marketing hype from day one! :-)
"Turned out to be memory."
Could have easily been a part of RAM where Windows put something not executed, eg a message string, or maybe a stuck bit that was stuck at 1 where the OS actually expected a 1, but a different OS used it from something more important such as executable code, or stored data than should have been a 0 when read and was stuck at 1. There can be many reasons why a small RAM fault might work or fail under different circumstances.
"ESA and NASA plan an altogether more convoluted Mars sample return mission, which will see NASA's Mars 2020 rover select and deposit samples on the Martian surface. An ESA Sample Fetch Rover will then collect the samples on a later mission and return them to a Mars Ascent Vehicle, which will carry the samples into orbit around Mars. A final spacecraft, ESA's Earth Return Orbiter, will then bring the samples back to Earth. What could possibly go wrong?"
Is that really any more unlikely than screaming through Mars' atmosphere, opening parachutes, then cutting the 'chutes loose to ride a rocket to the ground which then hovers over the surface while lowering the payload down on a winch cable?
"It worked with google news and a couple of EU countries who tried to make google pay the news providers. Situation going back to before when the news sites rapidly lost viewings."
That was a deliberate policy of de-listing by Google et al to make a point and try to stop a precedent being set. It was blackmail by Google et al. "Nice news site you have there. It'd be a shame if no one could find it"
"What do you mean we could join up with the other 450M people in the EU and take part in the ESA but sheer pig-headedness stops us from doing so (any more)?"
The UK is still a member of ESA. We just don't get some of the juicy contracts for EU funded projects any more or access to the military grade part of Galileo because non-members are seen as a security risk. That clause was enacted at the insistence of the UK back when it was a part of the EU. Oops.
"After two-and-a-half days behind bars not knowing what he had been arrested for"
Yes, that's the bit that leapt out at me too. US Police can "arrest" you and lock you away without telling you why? Really? Surely when you are "read your rights" that includes the reason for the arrest? If not, it should and if so, then he was not "read his rights" in the first place. Where was his phone call and his lawyer? It seems a number of processes where not followed correctly here.
x-stream only worked through their dialler s/w IIRC and you got an advert banner across the bottom of the screen. All the rest of the "free" ISPs used 0845 numbers and where in effect their own telecoms provider so got the "termination fee" thanks to the newly created unbundling/competitive market.
The main reason they've all gone is because there's no market for dial-up and the revenue model doesn't work with BB.
"You can almost certainly guess the answer. No, the computer was not plugged-in."
I've seen a situation where it really wasn't all that obvious to the user. They'd had some electrical work done at the office over the weekend which entailed all devices being unplugged from the wall sockets, them plugged back in ready for start of work on Monday. This user had PC, screen and printer. Three devices, check. Three plugs in wallpoints, check. But no power to the PC. Turns out the under desk fan heater is a 4th device and goes into the wallpoint behind the filing cabinet which currently has nothing plugged in. Naturally, all the cables are black and tangled up.
"Unfortunately this means that Stargate-SG1, and the various spin offs, contain a number of episodes that are clearly nonsense, but we will just have to live with this and pretend not to notice :-)"
To be fair, there's a lot of SF which was based on stuff we now know to be incorrect or "cutting edge" for the time and since debunked. Just look through some old physics text books :-) Not to mention these are usually not actual scientists writing the books and even scientists get it wrong frequently when extrapolating what we think we know into the future.
Now, where's my personal jetpack, flying car, hoverboard and nuclear generated electrickery too cheap to be worth metering -)
"Of course there's no reason to have the touchscreens, it is simpler to just have people fill in the bubbles with #2 pencils, but if people insist on technology..."
Depends. Is this an election where the voter only chooses Trump. Biden, Other or are there 25 other elections on the same ballot at the same time. each with 10 candidates?
"And the harder you try to bury the truth the more the internet will keep bringing it to the front of searches on what all the fuss is about."
I was thinking along similar lines. If the law stops unauthorised security researchers looking at stuff then the respected security researchers just have to produce regular press releases stating which companies and systems they have been refused authorisation for. If the have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear :-)
"As the regulations and conditions vary with national laws, it would make sense not to attempt to generalize for every location, but instead to take them separately. As such, since the U.S. is one of Amazon's largest markets, it's not unreasonable to write about that one in its own article with additional articles about other countries to follow if interesting things are found."
On the other hand, the USA is a federation of 50 different "countries", each with their own local labour laws and employment rights, so taking only 5 cases from a widespread geographic area is a bit like taking a single representative from each of UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy. (Except, maybe, all being EU members, their employment laws and conditions are probably more similar than some random group of US States.)
Oh, absolutely. You only have to look at the "accidental" deaths in the construction industry over the last 50 years or so. As recently as the 70s, people regularly died building bridges, for example. Nowadays, a single death on any large construction project is usually front page news. Yes, it means higher costs, maybe lower productivity, but most human beings don't put a number to the value of a human life. I don't necessarily include insurance actuaries, bean counters or lawyers as human beings, YMMV
"So do we now have Vlad on one side of the US presidential election and Xi on the other?"
Hmmm...sorta like Korea or Vietnam or Afghanistan. A proxy war by the superpowers where the chosen 3rd world field of battle is where the most damage will happen. Only this time the superpowers are Russia and China and the field of battle is the USA.
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