Posts by GBE

Re: Erm

is that because the toilets flush the opposite way?

In NZ when you push the lever "stuff" spews up instead of being sucked down?

That sounds a bit messy...

Kudos!

That one took a couple beats to sink in. :)

Re: Get a dog

The dog is there to bite the pilot in case he tries to take control.

Q: Then what's the pilot for?

A: Somebody's got to feed the dog...

Re: Ah, you have "the glare"...

I give it the Blue Steel.

They don't like it up 'em!

Re: You keep it all in.

Regarding gold:

Once the stuff is on the surface, its value is entirely psychological

Well, not quite entirely. Gold has medical and industrial uses, but they only account for about 10% of consumption. Even if gold had no "psychological" value, it wouldn't be worthless, but it would be worth less.

Re: Time to find another solution

I guess it's well past time to start looking for a replacement service.

I used dyndns for yonks. I used the free service for many years, and then the cheapest paid dynamic service for the last 5 years or so before they shut that down. When researching replacements, I narrowed it down to noip and dynu. I more-or-less flipped a coin and chose dynu, and I have been quite happy with it. The free service doesn't require monthly renewals, and everything "just works". I'm thinking about becoming a paying "member" for a few months as a way to show my appreciation even though I have no need for any of the extras you get for the money.

Re: "the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You"

Hardly “characters”. Both are mentioned once in the same throw-away sentence, just to get a laugh it seems.

Ah ha! So that's why I didn't remember them...

Re: Designed by SW engineers

Although I do have to give them credit for not embedding a full Linux stack complete with unchangeable firmware containing years-out-of-date web server software, an open telnet port and credentials of admin/admin...

What makes you think they didn't?

Re: It's not only their speed, it's their reliability

The only downside is when I have to come back to the UK and use trains here afterwards...

The last time I was in the UK, I thought the trains were a joy to use. In almost all of the US "using a train" requires hopping into a boxcar. Be careful though, it's far easier to jump onto a moving train than it is to jump off...

Re: Seems to contradict the recent CityFibre judgement?

So punters can cope with "Fibre" in the name meaning faster broadband even if there's no fibre,

It's copper fiber! Yea, that's it. We never said "optical" fiber did we?

Re: I was thinking the same...

Justine Diamond

Jury selection is in progress for the cop's trail (he's charged with 2nd degree murder).

Re: Nitro

Basically we know that the existing systems of protein and nucleic acid metabolism must have been optimal at the point of life's origin,

No, that's not how evolution works. We know it was "good enough" to survive more often than whatever it was competing with.

Anybody who thinks evolution produces optimal results has obviously never tried to maintain a human body in working condition for more than a couple decades...

Re: Scout - what could possibly go wrong?

And I'm also curious how Scout will ring doorbells.

Neither UPS nor Amazon delivery drivers ring doorbells now, so why would one expect a scout to do so?

Re: What intrigues me

[witness didn't think it was a real nun]

Why not?

Perhaps it wasn't a 90+ year old woman?

There probably are a few nuns less than 90 years old, but you've got bet the odds...

Only by marriage?

And his connection to the British Empire is only by marriage.

His uncle was the last Viceroy of India and the first Governor General of India.

That sounds awfully imperial to me...

Re: "much adored" ?

"much adored"

Yea, right. There are approximately 6 people who "adore" systemd, a large majority of users who tolerate it, and a vocal minority who hate it.

I'll stick with openrc, thank you very much.

Creating a QR code is trivial

It depends on if you are dealing with an advanced script-kiddy or someone who is actually IT literate. QR codes are a bit more advanced than normal script-kiddy stuff but would say one has to be IT literate to use one.

Nonsense. Anybody who can run a browser and knows how to "google" can create a QR code.

Just googlling "create a qr code" and clicking on the first link takes you to a web site where you enter whatever text you want. One more click, and there's your QR code.

Wrong punchline

The punchline I always heard was:

"Wrecked 'im? Hell, it killed 'im!"

Re: Implanting chips in employees

Has anyone seriously suggested this?

Yes. There's a company in Wisconsin, US that's doing it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/technology/microchips-wisconsin-company-employees.html

IIRC, it's voluntary, and not everybody with a chip got it implanted -- you could get it built in to a ring.

Is an iPhone really worth 4X?

£999 is enough to pay for ...

How the hell do people justify iPhones to themselves?

That's what I always think when I read these reviews. My current phone (Moto G5+) was $280 brand new and unlocked (and I coughed for the high-end model with extra memory). The Moto G4 I had before than was under $200 brand new, unlocked, retail. For the life of me, I don't see what the extra $800+ is getting people...

Re: The name 'Tesla' has been hijacked

When you ask someone what a Tesla is unless they are an old skool Electrical Engineer they might say 'oh, that's a funny car that runs on batteries'.

I think you'd be surprised how many people would know what a "Tesla" is (at least vaguely) if you started asking around in a modern hospital's radiology department. My 86 year old mother can tell you how many Teslas her cardiac stents are rated for...

Re: Sooo, they fined him less than he spent to do it legally

For sentences of more than 12 months, "85%" of the sentence must be served, but after that the prisoner can be paroled if their behavior was good.

Is it really parole? Where the released prisoner is still under court supervision and subject to re-incarceration if certain behavior restrictions are violated?

Or is it just a sentence reduction? Where the sentence is completely served, and the released prisoner is not under court supervision?

Everything I've read refers to it as a sentence reduction.

Re: "the system has a more modern and no-reboot look"

I still find it a pain having to reboot everytime a kernel or Graphics driver update (get your shit togetther, Nvidia) forces me to.

Why do you have to reboot for an Nvidia driver update? I've been running nvidia cards for decades, and don't remember ever having to reboot for driver updates.

I do remind myself every couple of weeks (when I've got some spare time) to reboot my desktop boxes just to make sure they are still still bootable. If you wait for six months, then inevitably something will force a reboot right in the middle of some urgent work -- and only then will you find that some update or other that happened during the past months required a configuration adjustment that you forgot. Now you've got to figure out what went wrong while people in manufacturing are twiddling their thumbs waiting for you.

Re: I had to use salesforce product for a while

Me too.

We were supposed to use it as a software engineering bug-tracking system. It was awful. We wasted potfuls of money paying somebody to write some customer screens/flows/whatever. It never worked in a useful manner, but at least it was expensive and wasted a lot of time. After a couple years, we finally convinced the powers-that-be that it was hopeless, and they let us set up a MantisBT system. I guess, the sales and support people still use SF...

Re: Technology that doesn't exist

there can always be a transition period and then a post-transition period transition to the new technology period, and then a post final transition deadline transition to accommodate the timetable slippage of the post-transition transition period...

Thank you Sir Humphry!

Nobody is suggesting 4:3

Nobody is suggesting 4:3.

Then I will! I want a laptop with a 4:3 display like my last _IBM_ Thinkpad had. My current Lenovo T500 has a 16:10 (1680x1050) display, which isn't too bad, but not as nice as as a 4:3 (1600x1200).

Re: Waveguide wizardry

Anyone care to enlighten me on how wave guides are used to form an image on the multiple focal plane plates??

Um...

They modulate the shield frequencies and cross-circuit to B!

Re: It's a sad story actually...

They are capable of it, which makes it all that more tragic that they so rarely actually do anything great.

The last couple versions of the Microsoft C compiler for DOS were great products. And some of the wired, optical mice were top notch. That's about it.

Re: Dowsing?

There is a theory that at least one form of dowsing works on the principle of detecting changes in the Earth's local electrostatic field as one walks around.

Except all of the real, scientific, trails of dowsing show that it _doesn't_ work.

So, trying to come up with theories about how it works seems a bit silly.

Re: Why DVD size?

The 3.5" floppy has a shuttered case and designed to go in a pocket. Far more sensible than DVD style packaging.

IIRC, whith the first CD drive I used (a bulky, Sun branded SCSI thing), the CDs were in shuttered hardshell cases similar to 3.5" floppys. They were pretty bullet-proof, but people voted with their wallets, and they died off very quickly.

Re: What good does this fine do?

I mean, basically the government is now handing out a fine to an institution which got paid with... government money (aka: the taxpayers money!) in the first place. Could someone please explain to me how exactly this is going to have an effect?

It can have an effect because the PHB of government department X takes if very seriously if a chunk of money is deducted from his budget and moved to the budget of some other department's PHB. The basic goal of managers in government is to maximise their department's budget and/or headcount. Taking money away and giving it to "the competition" stings.

Re: Shite

Microsoft C compiler v4.0 and CodeView in the mid 80s

That was indeed a solid product. IIRC, it was basically a repackaged version of a compiler/debugger by a company they bought. (Whitesmiths?)

It took a while, but they eventually f*&^#d it up: it turned into VisualStudio.

EDIT:

Nope, I misremembered. The first couple versions of Microsoft C were repackaged versions of Liveboat's Lattice-C compiler. Supposedly versions 3 and up were developed entirely by MS:

https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-c-c/2x

Bravo on the Kibology reference

it's Spot that is NOT ALLOWED

It's been _ages_ since I've seen a kibology reference.

Good one!

Re: Use-After-Free and Heap Overflow in 2018?

how do these make it through QA and testing?

How would we poor Adobe users know?

Oh yea, we _are_ Adobe's "QA and testing".

I'd vote is for "HMS Cunning Plan"

Not that the MoD cares what some random USAan thinks....