Posts by John Brown (no body)

"Alternatively, we have the Recall of MPs Act that makes the procedure simpler, mostly safer and is more democratic. If the MP's a wrong'un, the consituency runs a recall petition. If at least 10% of the electorate signs the petion, there's a recall election and every voter gets to participate in a democratic process. Well, no system is perfect. See Tower Hamlets for more info."

Yeah, but the requires the MP to have either:

1. A custodial prison sentence (including a suspended sentence);

2. Suspension from the House of at least 10 sitting days or 14 calendar days, following a report by the Committee on Standards;

Only then does the 10% of constituents petition kick in. And bear in mind that 10% of constituents is quite a lot of people in constituency's where the voter turnout is often quite low. People who don't care enough to vote in the first place probably also will not bother signing a recall petition. eg if only 20% of people vote, they'll be split between the parties anyway so even then it takes not just all those who voted against the incumbent but likely a significant portion of those who DID vote for him/her. So, even if there was a change such that anyone could start a recall petition just because they think their MP is shit at the job, it's still quite a high bar. Opposition trying to abuse the system would need to be well coordinated and highly visible to the public to have a chance at succeeding. Maybe allow constituent initiated recall petitions but raise the bar a tad more so the MP needs to be really shit to collect enough opposition to cause a recall?

Re: Would have done otherwise

"But, being idiots, I would have asked idiot money for the fix."

He'd already been brought back once as a contractor. The fact he said no, not at any price kinda implies he not only got made redundant but then got screwed over again when contracted back in.

The pins on the chip would expand when warm and make contact. When cold in the morning they were just a tad too short.

I have no idea how the chip had rattled loose, but it was a permanent fix.

Your first line is the answer to your second line :-)

It's usually called thermal creep. That expansion and contraction of the metal legs on the chips and the sockets themselves can cause the chips to creep up out of the sockets. It's also why PAT requires fitted, ie not moulded, mains plugs be opened and the screws re-tightened.

It was a regular occurrence when dealing with a decent sized fleet of early PCs where a whole 1MB of RAM was often 32 or more socketed chips along with the CPU and/or other support chips. Pressing all the chips in was often the fix. Even if the fault was obviously something else, pressing them all in anyway while the cover was off as preventative maintenance was good practice :-)

Re: Small Rural AM station?

"now the feed shows 50 stories, but it's the same 8-10 stories over and over for several days."

That's why, thanks to another Reg poster, I use this page as my starting point on El Reg.

Re: Here's an intersting exercise

I think it's about $25B in total, including the £4B of twitter shares he already owned. That's about 10% of his total worth, most of which is tied up Tesla and SpaceX shares. Not to mention the effect a massive pubic fail on such a scale would have on his business reputation, making it harder to raise funds in the future and likely knock-on effects on the share prices of his other ventures. I suspect a Twitter bankruptcy would end up costing him more than the total sale price in the short to medium term, 20% or more of his current wealth but he'll still be worth $billions.

Re: Prigs

"and is never diverted to heirs."

There's almost always heirs in the bloodline. The "employer" is very far down that list. It's certainly not a given that the church will get the inheritance. Although I'd imagine there's great pressure on the employees to stipulate the church as the prime or only benefactor in their wills.

"So the question is what are you paying for when you buy a Telsa?"

The same thing as some people spending $2000 on a pair of "Ye" trainers think they are getting? Ie not much more than the "name.

On the other hand, there really wasn't all that much choice in EVs when Tesla launched. Credit where credits due, Tesla did kick the arse of the EV market at the time the incumbents were still paying lip service to the idea of EVs and probably accelerated the market by a decade and so still have enormous brand awareness with the public.

Re: Video on Ring's servers is the problem

"That is LITERALLY the same as permission to search your house."

No, it LITERALLY isn't. They ask if you have something specific and you invite them in then that's all they are there for. If they happen to notice your coke stash sitting on the coffee table or your "pot" plants on the windowsill or all the electrical goods still in boxes all around the room, then that's your own fault for inviting them in. Unless they already have a reason to suspect you of something, they have no need or reason to go wandering about your house, opening drawers and cupboards and are not allowed to. The act of inviting a Police Officer into your home DOES NOT give them the right to search it "just because". They need a reason usually called "reasonable suspicion", ie a genuine justification, at which point you are a suspect anyway and they WILL come back with a warrant. Unless they can later show a real concern that evidence may be removed or destroyed in the meantime or an immediate threat of harm to others within the property and barge their way in. And they WILL have to justify that. But that's a highly unlikely scenario extension to my original scenario.

On the other hand, what you say may be the case in the country you live in. In the UK it is definitely not proper procedure nor is it the norm.

Re: This brought a few laughs on Friday afternoon

"My grandma does not want to hear or read about workarounds. If Linux does not work "out of the box" then it is not suitable."

So, that includes the "top-of-the-line" Carbon X1 in the review, running Windows with no built-in Ethernet port and no drivers for the internal WiFi controller? That's pretty much unusable OOTB with the latest Windows. The ONLY reason it works OOTB at retail is because Lenovo already jumped that hoop for you. Fortunately, despite some problems with some, not all, Linux distros, the author didn't report any WiFi fails when testing Linux :-)

And don't forget, MS don't write the drivers to support the hardware, they just include them. So why do you expect Linux to be different? If Linux can't support some hardware on release day, it's because the hardware manufactures didn't bother to support it. Just as they failed to support Windows 8 for "older" hardware running perfectly fine on Windows 7. Same applies to some hardware supported on Win10 but not in Win11. Windows users get screwed over regularly by hardware vendors and their (lack of) driver support. And even MS have relented somewhat on the "required specs" to run Win11 because users are not going to replace perfectly good "unsupported" kit just for a Windows upgrade a whole new version number higher than "The last Windows version you'll ever need". Get back under your bridge.

Re: Maybe, just maybe

"I've got a bunch that if the shoes are sent to poor countries, there might be a single recipient, whoever controls the strongest local militia."

No need for hunches. There are many documented cases of donated goods to poor countries barely getting off the ship before they enter the cash economy rather than being distributed as intended. A friend of mine moved to an African country and also saw it first hand.

Re: Force Huawei to partner with a 'local' manufacturer

But unworkable in reality. China requires that of ALL foreign companies working in China. To be true tit-for-tat and even barely legally workable, Germany would have to do the same for all non-German companies with a manufacturing presence in Germany. And get the rest of the EU to agree to that framework.

Re: voted Labour and Remain

No, it's a completely unveiled pop at the party faithfuls of both sides who are trying to re-write history. I see at least two people downvoted my comment, so can only assume they are both people who trying to do exactly that. :-)

How far can you travel on a newly built motorway for that? At anything between £10M-£20M per mile, something in the order of 0.1 miles. That ain't gonna get one anywhere near the moon. I can drive up a hill and get closer :-)

Re: Brrrreeeeeexxsshiiittt

"You got your Brexit. ARM chose not to list here in spite of this new freedom."

The financial rules are likely a large part of the reason, but another biggy, as per the original article, is that the US NASDAQ also values companies higher than here and so is likely to also be a significant consideration. If you want to sell shares in your company, the best place to do it is the place that over values the stock price.

Re: Why would one ...

"Cue a new version of the Pop Tart - the Pop Pizza! I'd buy that if pissed enough."

A mini Calzone pizza? Already out there, probably all year round in Iceland, but in most supermarket freezer sections around Xmas time in the "party snack" section.

Re: Paint with *that* broad a brush...

Not to mention Visa, American Express, Paypal etc since no one use cash any more ;-)

Re: Current world production

Maybe someone is confusing mass of ore with mass of refined Lithium? Dunno, but you're right, the numbers don't match.