Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: After booting for the second time

"What I smell coming out of cars (!) in the US and cafes in the Netherlands doesn't seem to have quite the same body odour/rotten onion smell."

The (luckilly now ex-)neighbours seemed to have found a supplier that sold "cats piss" weed. God, it was awful!

Re: So, he was just fired ?

"The company just shut up and delivered another server, full cost to themselves. That is more than generous."

I'm a little surprised the courier company delivered it to the address. This was 20 years ago, and sending kit like that would commonly be handled by a specialist delivery company, end even if not, I'd assume they used the same courier company for other similar delivery, probably also the backup tape collections. I'd like to think they may have spotted and "unusual" delivery address.

Yes, WFH isn't for everyone by any means, but mandating WFO in the mistaken belief it will result in a more productive and happier workforce is madness simply because, as you've read above, many people are happier, better off and more productive WFH.

Yes, I keep hearing stories of sandwich/snack shops, bars and cafes struggling because of the lower footfall due to WFH. What I don't hear anything about is the likely uptick in grocery shopping or smaller local shops. pubs and cafes in the suburbs as they get used more by the people remaining in thoise suburbs during business hours. They money is still being spent, but in different ways and different places. Of course, some of that spend will be saved/banked, but in most cases will still be spent eventually. The economy is still going around, just not quite in the "traditional" way. And that seems to be upsetting some people. "Traditional" city centres have been declining for years now anyway, which is why there is so much re-development into residential in or close to the city centres nowadays.

Re: Hybrid

Up voted, but on the other hand, most university's are businesses that rely on income, whether student fees, research grants or donations to continue operating.

Re: Saying you'll quit isn't the same as quitting

"and all HR in Basingstoke"

What has Basingstoke done to incur you wrath? Oh, wait, I was there once. As you were old chap.

Re: So, even Apple can't get it right

I still though the iPad was too small until they finally joined the mainstream and started making them up to the larger sizes everyone else was making. Having said that, I can't see a use case for spending the premium on an iPad for me because I don't have the rest of the eco-system that would make it more useful. My brother, on the other hand swears by his iPad because he has Apple laptop and iphone and I will grant that they all work together pretty seamlessly. Android tablets in general don't interoperate so well, but I imagine you'd get a better experience if you went for, say Samsung laptop, phone and tablet, but that can cost up into similar regions as Apple these days.

"just for the timer app for holding her students' yoga poses."

If you do something often enough, you very quickly learn to quite accurately estimate time +/- a few seconds, especially short periods. There are many things people used to be able to do well through practice and experience which most are no longer able to do because the rely on tech to replace experience and even memory.

Re: Killer App & Price

If you are in the UK or EU, the cattle should all be chipped so you can scan it for it's UUID and possibly other data. But then you can do that from a phone with NFC and, of course, if your at the cattle market, odds are you in or on the edge of a town so likely do have a signal for an internet connection. But anyone buying cattle already knows the breed just by looking at it can probably give a very good estimate of weight, health etc because you don't spend that kind of money unless you know what you are doing.

Re: $3,499 x 200,000

ANd knowing Apple, that's probably an 75% profit margin :-)

Even so, I wonder how many of 200,000 sold were bought with every intention of returning them for the "no questions". Even fanbois might try that just to get their hands on it for a short while :-)

Re: I like the watch

And yet, the probabl change in CEO should worry you NOW. If Apple turn "evil", they ALREADY have loads of very personal data on you that you willingly gave them. It's already too late.

"This is an honest question, not simply a critique on Apple or the commentard above"

The word you are looking for is that abortion of a word/concept, "gameification". Marketing have created a competitive spirit to exercise and enough people have fallen for it that they now feel the need to tell others how well they are doing so they can feel good about being better than others. Even if it's just people in the office telling others how many steps their pedometer app/watch/phone/fitness band has recorded so far today.

Re: Disposible like BIC or Gillette razors

On the other hand, the bandwidth reduction of a heavily degraded and spliced fibre could well still be more than enough for a remote location with few endpoints compared to a fibre feeding a large town or city that;s running at a much higher capacity. Is it something in the order of 350GB/s per fibre? That could be degraded quite a lot before the 30 people at the far end in the wilds of Alaska would start complaining that they were no longer getting their 100/100Mb/s :-)

Re: Disposible like BIC or Gillette razors

Starlink seems to be the "perfect" filler for those outlying areas, although it does seem to be getting used quite a lot simply as a "local" competitor by many others, especially in the broken US market, I wonder if it will unintentionally act as a spur to the fibre build-out not just because fibre has better latency and more capacity, but because fibre, once laid, can be sweated for decades at almost no further cost whereas the current crop of Starlink sats have a, what? 5 to 7 year life? per sat at max and will need constant launches and replacement throughout the life of the network.

Re: Which one to bin

"And offering Seasons 3-5 of a given show but dropping 1 and 2 is ridiculous."

I've noticed that too. In at least some cases though, a series may be dropped by a broadcaster or even production house, and then picked again by another, so there's two or more lots of rights holders to deal with for differing seasons. I'm not defending the practice, mind :-)

Re: Query: the timing of ads

I've seen the same happen on cable/satellite channels here in the UK too, more so on US owned and/or operated channels.

I've also noted that Channel 5 catch-up/streaming also has unskippable adverts now so I just record the live transmission of anything I might want to watch (increasingly few things) or find "other sources" rather than use their streaming service.

Re: Question is...

This guy probably went on to a great career as an advertising exec considering his denials of the truth :-)

Re: Idiots

Yes, just because something is in the Ts&Cs doesn't mean it's fair or legal. This is very much worth challenging.

On the other hand, this is the USA and the courts will often side with the contract, even if it is weighted in favour in one party and therefore inherently unfair. I'd like to think this will go to trial, but experience tells me that it will be settled out of court because no $BigCorp wants' it Ts&Cs tested in court in case they lose.

Re: Cool, a new toy to fiddle about with.

"I fail to see the niche that DSL will fill these days."

Older, still working, kit such as netbooks etc, especially since this release is 32-bit only and some distros are reducing or eliminating 32-bit support nowadays.

"A CD you say... I'm sure I have a CD drive gathering dust somewhere..."

Odds are that copying the ISO image to Yumi or Ventoy will allow a USB pendrive boot. :-)

...and stop calling me Brian. I'm a very naughty boy!

Re: Agenda

"I do know that NASA etc funding is to a large extent determined by politicians,"

Yes, and apart from anything else, missions like this don't usually just "happen" in a very few years. Most likely this mission was planned and started development under Trump or Obama or even earlier and has almost nothing to do with Bidens administration anyway. As you say, keep politics out of it :-)

Possibly a good point. There'd be no need to haul the weight back up. Just store it down there when it reaches the bottom and only haul up the cable/hook ready for the next load making it even more efficient. The people working down shuffling the heavy drums into the storage areas can go down during periods of high demand, thus assisting in the generation of power and can stay there until the power cost of bringing them back up falls to off-peak rates. Trebles all round! :-)

Re: 2026 Nov 19, 02:00 Universal Time

You remind us (well me, anyway) that in orbital mechanics, *everything* is moving, including the point of reference. Thanks!

Re: A brilliant testament to analysis

Most of the clients I deal with do have it switched on by default. Every boot up starts with the blue bitlocker PIN entry screen.

Even the default Windows Bitlocker settings that most users might be using has the option in the Bitlocker settings to switch this option on. Although I think this only allows a numerical PIN of 10-20 digits. If you want a passphrase, I think that can only be done using policy settings.

Re: A brilliant testament to analysis

I don't know if it's still done, but I remember back in the day when TPMs where plug in PCBs on a header and when replacing a failed system board you needed to remember to move the TPM to new system board. Most people weren't using Bitlocker then anyway and I'd imagine a new system board with a new UUID would bork the operation anyway requiring a recovery key. Although now I come to think of it, the current HP laser printers (at least the large business ones) also require a TPM to be transferred over when replacing the formatter board.