Posts by Pen-y-gors

Re: Lego...

I built my Saturn V out of standard bricks. For realism I got an Airfix kit.

Re: "..located in the area around Newquay airport and Goonhilly..."

@Ledswinger

The pea-wits of Westminster will make a decision based on political considerations alone

So, not Scotland or Wales, then?

Re: "..located in the area around Newquay airport and Goonhilly..."

@LeeE

"Ascension Island"

...and you thought the Gatwick Express took a long time to get there.

Re: So...

Nah, after that long it's probably turned into coprolite.

Re: Ionospheric ramjet...

@John Smith 19

Historically

a) No-one

b) No-one

Now

a) Elon Musk

b) Elon Musk

Re: Typo

@Jemma

cars expensive break job

Hey, if you break your Ferrari by wrapping it round a tree, it is a VERY expensive job!

The govt only really worry about being able to hack into your secure communications when they might be interesting - email and messaging, location, financial transactions. GCHQ won't worry too much if they can't decipher an instruction that tells your hall light to switch on or off. Until that is, some nasty trrrst network decide to communicate secretly by sending morse code via bedside lights... Upgraded light bulbs could have a small LED display that decodes the morse. (Can I patent that idea as the next WhatsApp?)

Re: So go hybrid

@Blottoits actually us citizens that are doing the subsidising

True, but....

What is the purpose of government? It is (in theory) a mechanism for us to work together for the common good. Once a project for the benefit of all is identified, the government routes the money from us as individuals to that project. Our present government has identified that it will benefit us all to have WMDs capable of killing hundreds of millions of foreign men, women and children. We can't each afford to buy our own WMD, so we will do it jointly, and will happily contribute £200 billion to this worthwhile cause.

Power infrastructure is no different, fundamentally. If we as a society believe that getting rid of ICE vehicles and replacing them by a clean alternative, EVs or hydrogen or whatever, then there will be a cost to providing the infrastructure. Unlike WMDs some of us may be able to generate some or all of our own leccy, reducing the infrastructure demand, and clearly a wide use of a mix of decentralised renewables (hydro, wind, solar, tidal) will also reduce the infrastructure impact, but not eliminate it entirely. We will need to spend money on infrastructure one way or the other, and that means we work together through a system of taxation. It's not a 'subsidy', it's working for the common good - and will probably be cheaper than the WMDs. I know which I'd prefer.

Re: So they want..

Restricted address space?

If they can't handle logging every activity of every IPv6 address, perhaps the spooks should float a new standard, IPv4.5 - like IPv4 but a bit bigger - shove a 5th group at the end, max value 4 - and they could include built in tracking and logging for all packets as part of the standard.

Re: What job will last forever

@AC

police bots are still a while away from usable

Nah,

1. Has it moved?

2. Shoot it.

3. Play mp3 of 'Stop. Armed Police.'

Job done - those can replace most US cops.

Re: Starting on the Museum exhibits, ending on them.

Been there, done that.

Come to think, most IT learning is chasing things heading toward obsolescence

Looking back over 44 years of coding and related things, there has been a lot of learning, but also a lot of forgetting. Mainly detail stuff. I can no longer remember the commands for various IBM MVS SORT statements, but I don't think I ever could. I had a card (still in a drawer somewhere) that reminded me. Ditto the syntax of Fortran IV. But I'm still coding.

The things that matter are not the details. It's the ability to analyse problems, design clear solutions, develop test strategies and persuade users to reveal what they are actually trying to achieve, rather than what they think they want/need (cf. earlier article this week on wanting a Print button)

Those are the skills I learning in the 1970s, and I'm still using them today. Teaching people to code is one thing, but it's just scratching the surface of the job skills.

Re: Nova GSi?

No, whimsy is good. Whimsy is why we like El Reg. Dull science we can get in Ap.J.

Re: @ Charlie Clark

@codejunky

but why would the EU's stance on freedom of movement have diddly squat to do with our choosing to allow people to enter this country even from the EU to help on farms?

The EU's stance has no relevance. The problem is May's stance.No foreigners. Remember that one of the major advantages of Brexit is meant to be that we can chuck out all these working foreigners who contribute so much to our economy. (We can already chuck out the non-working ones after three months without leaving the EU, but May just couldn't be arsed). No foreigners is what 17.4 million people asked for. It would be a tad silly to have a Brexit to expel the foreigners, and then let them all back in again. After all, there must be <bold>some</bold> advantages to Brexit? Surely? No, go on, something, please? Just a little thing? Okay, no.

Re: Wants to have her cake & eat it?

@FIA

"The reality is, sometimes things take longer than estimated, which incurs extra costs, some of which are peoples time. Otherwise you're just making accountants look good.

Yep, but estimates are just that, estimates, not fixed-price quotes. And if the management accept those estimates, then they work to them. If they turn out to be too low, why should you work for nothing to get things back on track? Didn't they include some contingency for just that? And what if the estimates are wrong because of duff info from management in the first place?

And if they insist on you working free hours to correct under-estimates, will they also let you have extra time off with pay if you come in under estimate? Sauce for the goose...

Re: Wants to have her cake & eat it?

@AC

She seems to be asking for overtime on top of a salary, which we'd all love to have.

What's wrong with that? Is this some strange USian notion that if you are paid a monthly salary, rather than hourly, that makes you a slave who can be forced to work 24/7 without any extra compensation? Next you'll be saying they can be sacked without reason or compensation.

Re: To be honest...

Microsoft are probably no worse than many big employers.

I fail to understand this difference between 'professional' and other workers for overtime. A job basically comprises a contract to work X hours for Y pay. Okay, in a managerial/professional/senior setting you may vary your hours from 9-5 to get a job done, but then you take time off later.

In a previous life my manager tried that "unpaid overtime, professional, paid to do a job, yada yada ..." line on me. I gently explained the idea that a definition of professional is 'paid to do something' and that the opposite is 'amateur' - does something for fun without pay. I suggested if he wanted a professional job, then he needed to pay for it. The alternative was getting some incredibly amateur work - which would end up costing the company a lot more.

I got the overtime, but I also took voluntary redundancy soon after (and went straight into a better-paid new job which didn't question overtime rates)

Horses for courses?

Yes, it does sound like a bit of a timewarp - for 'power users'. My 7 year-old lappie also has 8GB, and 18-month old one has 16GB and lots besides. But I'm a developer.

I also have a nice little HP jobbie with 2GB and which doesn't even have a proper SSD - 32GB of on-board memory and it happily runs Win 10. Obviously not for running mega-spreadsheets, but it's fine for checking e-mails, browsing amazon, watching a bit of telly etc, and it can actually be used for typing, unlike a phone. For some people that may be perfectly adequate. Personally I regret the death of the cheapo notebook format like the old Acer Aspire 1.

So, no, budget laptops with 4GB which can't upgrade to 128GB aren't ludicrous. They meet the needs of many customers - but it's important that they are sold as what they are, not mega-gaming machines.