Posts by Andy The Hat 1844 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Oct 2010
Historically, "Master" in the 12th century was the person who was educated to the highest level at a "university", generally taught those seeking knowledge (before anything such as Professor existed) and often ran the establishment. It is still used in such contexts as "school master" and "Master of all he surveys" neither of which are related to later use.
I do think this affair is taking the literal meaning of words too far ... and by affair I didn't mean the person suggesting this change was sleeping with his mistress ... although of course he did actually sleep there wouldn't be an issue ... no, not that type of issue ... oh this is (non-mathematically) complex :-)
Problem with main bearings is that something like 60-65% of all european machines use drum assemblies from one manufacturer which have embedded (ie non-replaceable) bearings. So what was a £20 replacement bearing is now a full drum assembly replacement ... Saves several pence on production, perhaps a few pounds on total parts but absolutely kills economic repairability for the consumer. Washing machine bearings are the glued in batteries of the washing machine world.
"£75" is not real world, it's another marketing statistic to try to get people to buy stuff (and raise tax). If you replace a old A rated washing machine with a new A rated ,machine, run it every day on a hot wash perhaps you could see such a saving. On average you will be chucking out an existing appliance, buying a really expensive new appliance (which may be identical) but getting a new sticker.
Bit like gas boilers where people are being fooled into replacing perfectly good boilers with "modern boilers that are much more efficient" - sometimes it's the difference between a 93% thermally efficient and a 94% thermally efficient unit where cost savings can be totally negated by the regular service calls on the rubbish new system ...
If I build something, supply my software and my hardware to support it and, perhaps a third party has an idea for an extension they want to produce and I agree to sell it to my customers for a cut subject to conditions a,b and c. After all, it's my product, I want to control it and if I make little money as a company that's apparently fine. At what point does my company become big enough that I can no longer control my product in that way - at what point does 'normal' behaviour become monopolistic? After all, in this case, Apple cutomers could go elsewhere and buy a Windows or Linux or whatever box instead and developers could develop for other platforms so it's not a monopoly in the overall computer market, it is a seller of it's own specific product with its own product control ... I'm not agreeing with Apple's actions, just curious to know when you are forced to lose control of your product because it's too popular ...?
My mother pays £15-£18 *a quarter* for her landline ... she doesn't have to remember to charge it, the buttons are big enough to see and it works nearly all the time by picking it up ... I wonder how the outlay of £29.99 a month for "full fibre" added to her expenditure of her state pension would influence her attitude towards keeping a landline? I know of multiple household with old people in the same boat, where the phone is not media distribution channel but a simple lifeline and something to shout the shopping list at ...
Starship in it's current configuration is also unable to hover. As I understand it the first engine will flip and slow the vehicle, the second is used almost as a landing retro as two engines cannot be throttled back enough to sustain hover. So it's rock and a hard place - plummet vertically with little drag or directional control and use loads of fuel trying to control both the speed and position or, go for the high drag, high(er) aerodynamic control and little fuel use then do the more complicated flip and stop manoeuvre.
Sounds easier to do the first (and they do it enough on orbital missions) but when fuel load equates to payload and payload is the premium asset, the second option could have massive payload and thus economic advantages.
"In addition, the system is intended to support the Post Office Card Account, a specially created bank account systems designed to allow people who have no other banking access to collect social security benefits, although the Department for Work and Pensions has since decided to withdraw support for the service."
I have a relation that collects her DWP pension in cash via a 'post office card account'. That facility was planned to and, as far as I'm aware, is still going to be withdrawn. Two things arise from this (a) she can't get to her money as it's got to go into a current account in a bank branch miles from home (don't even think of telling me to put an 89 year old onto internet banking so she can pay her milkman or how she should annoy the shopkeeper by using a card for a pint of milk.) and (b) it makes the above support facility a complete waste of money ...
So are the DWP "withdrawing support for the service" - in which case why are they spending money supporting it - or are they continuing to support the service in which case why haven't all those using the facility been told of a policy change?
Somewhere I have a picture of an arse and an elbow which I can hire out for comparison training ...
Actually it's also for "outreach activities" so possibly public information materials aimed at all of us space-faring public - messages like "Don't dump in space", "Please deorbit after use", "Recycle your urine", "Dog shit bags hung on the solar panels - NO THANKS!" ... A few posters like that, a CEO, five vice CEOs and a few assistants to the CEO, about ten committee meetings and some random spacey expense should swallow all that cash nicely ...
Firefox crashes, restarts using tabs from last session ... Opera did the same, I haven't notices Chrome doing anything different ...
The only issue is when a damn open window gets created deliberately or accidentally that you didn't notice/forgot, you close the main window with all the tabs to leave a lovely clean spawned (...of the Devil ...) window. Yes some browser's history can potentially recreate everything easily (does it in Vivaldi?) but that's just plain annoying. I want an "always close spawned windows first" default browser setting ...
Does that mean A) the thing was liable to blow up or B) extreme limits were set too low?
If (A) then they are in trouble as it's liable to blow up ...
If (B) then why? Either they were extreme limits or they were limits that someone dreamt up for no reason and that means the design methodology is fundamentally wrong and they are in trouble ...
Conclusion 1 ... they are in trouble.
Conclusion 2 ... any astronaut riding this thing based on 'tweaking' the limits rather than fixing the fundamental issues needs their heads tested.
As I said when the bloody thing was announced, soft, loose, fine grained sand is ok. But if you hit one stone/pebble/piece of alien space debris only a couple of square centimeters in area the impactor will stop dead unless you can back up and steer around.
As has already been said, try bashing a smooth, straight earth spike into the ground with a sledgehammer and see how hard it is ... and that's only a square centimetre or so of cross sectional area with 5Kgs of hammer head and an almighty swing (or a hundred) behind it ...
To my mind the project was designed in a lab by a scientist making gross assumptions about ground conditions and didn't bother to consult someone in the field who knocks posts in for a living.
"It is alleged that ..." not "Assange attempted to ..."
That is part of the potential US case which is yet to be tried.
What's interesting to me is it was found that Assange could have been prosecuted under the GB Official Secrets Act for leaking the US cables ... As he was not a signatory (being an officer of the Crown) to the Official Secrets Act, the information released was not GB state owned material or from GB state owned sources and was sourced from a third party overseas that makes an oddly shaped pill to swallow. Is there an 'information belonging to allies or "friends at the time"' clause in the OSA that allows such an interpretation? Obviously the information within the documents themselves cound not be regarded as UK secret as, even if they contained information pertinant to the UK, they were freely shared in some way with a third party which, by definition, means it is not secret to the UK.
The 'not covered by GDPR' bit is confusing me. I was under the impression that GDPR had been absorbed into British law to be conformant with European data directives? The British law side of it does not disappear on Brexit ... or does data protection legislation die and has no replacement? If it does die that deserves far more of a shout scream and run around like a headless chicken headline than Faceache and Gobble being opportunistic ...
And edge relies on? ... come on keep up ... and IE is not mentioned because ...?
1) it's out of support
2) it's not impacted due to not doing embedding nasty stuff that google accountants like
3) they forgot or
4) they don't care?
What about Vivaldi and Brave - is it the rendering engine that's compromised or something else?
"Russia and China don't want to play. They'd much rather develop their own vaccines that don't work that well."
Or want to produce their own vaccine that works just as well but will cost them a fraction of the price ...?
Or want to produce their own vaccine that works just as well and don't want their countries to be bent over a Western political barrel ...?
Or want to produce their own vaccines that work much better and are cheaper because their development isn't linked to western capatilist economic interests and is medically driven?
Or are quite happy to have a safe 65% vaccine rather than an "up to 95%" vaccine that's potentially 50% ...?
Sweeping statements don't help. You have to look at this holistically ...
How many Falcon first stages didn't make it back to the scutters for cleaning? Now a pinned recovery doesn't even make the news!
Someone famous in the field of writing proverbial comments said something about not going too quickly and trapping simians. Trump has tried to armtwist NASA into galloping into the blinding headlights of endeavour and, as is his want, to set themselves up for glorius failure. Musky seems to develop at a jog but his abilities seems to lay in both the concurrent production of test vehicles and, more importantly, the rapid flow of information from each experiment into the next. This makes each step as productive as possible and allows the actual project development process to be as rapid as it can be.
"... Threat from Securities Investments that Finance Communist Chinese Military Companies "
Not "the Chinese", not even "the People's Republic of China" but an Executive Order using the wholly incitive phrase "the Communist Chinese". I have heard McCarthy's lawyers are sueing for breach of copyright ...
At least we can rest in our beds knowing that the US Anti-Communist military can't get it's similarly mucky paws on equipment from Intel or AMD or IBM or Microsoft or Amazon ... or get funding from the state ...
I don't think "non standard behaviour" can be claimed for a designed action in a specific application .. it may not be the same action as a.n.other application but so what?
I agree with the second point though - I want to paste the copy buffer when I tell the app to paste it, not when the app wants me to paste it. And I do find it so much slower to type ctrl-V rather than CR ... especially if I have to completely change my keyboard position from having typed ctrl-C doh!
The problem as I see it is reflected in an order (that is running stupidly late!).
I order a thing from Amazon UK, it is fulfilled by Amazon Eu sarl, the "in stock" goods are "received" in Marseille (from where I don.t know, they were in stock). It is then dispatched from "Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur" (which I believe is also Marseilles) and sent somewhere ... It's currenlty in the aether ...
Who does the UK Government tax? Amazon UK obviously ... except Amazon UK made no profit out of the transaction (in fact it made a loss after paying Amazon Luxembourg it's seller IP and warehouse distribution royalties and purchase from Amazon EU). So Amazon UK pays no tax but France can obviously tax Amazon EU ... unless the goods were sourced from Amazon.br and Marseille is a WHO freeport and the goods are coming "into the country" via a WHO freeport in which case the tax will only be applied if the purchase actually crossed the border rather than being shunted around in the French dock ... But of course Amazon EU paid Amazon.someone for IP rights etc and didn't make a profit which means France can't get tax ... But if tax isn't being sought by France maybe the US will ... oh no because the funds never crossed the US border but are sitting in the Cayman Islands the US can't get their paws on it either ... here we go again.
If the Governments impose a 2% turnover tax (for instance) rather than trying to chase the tails of the profit then Amazon will run to the WHO and claim poverty and unfair treatment compared to other multinationals who do pay tax through their profits and, probably rightly so, the WHO will concur.
The tax system is a complete mess. The holes were baked in to allow tax avoidance by the super rich and it's now biting the arses of the politicians who always profited from the system who on the one hand don't want to close the loopholes but on the other hand want to be seen to get their fair share of tax money.
In the long run all this "we're going to tax" is crap and won't happen unless the companies decide to do a deal which suits *them* as they can use the tax avoidance system better than those who built it.
"And it needs to make clear that misuse of that information is the crime."
As I understand it, that is one of the arguments againt the statute as it potentially means that anyone who signs or accepts a licence agreement would be liable to criminal prosecution not civil liability.
Of course this means the 'simple' wording needs 'simply' extending to exclude private data ... but that would only refer to personal private data on a private machine not data hosted or belonging to a third party organisation ... unless of course you accepted a licence to access a private organisation's systems to look at data ... for instance a cloud database which happens to contain your personal data as part of a bigger system ... Oops it's suddenly complicated. I can see an email on the webmail server that says Malcom was sleeping with Justin's hamster - my data (addressed to me) but if I mention it to anyone am I dragged into the courts by Justin's jealous dog because that data was not on a personal, private system but held on a corporate email server that I was granted access to and which now makes it a criminal offence to 'use' under the CFAA ...
The CFAA is clearly rubbish and needs fully rewriting ... carefully.
So we choose to buy this stuff because it's cheaper ... or more expensive ... ?
I had a fan heater. The switch went and I was quite capable of fixing ... the deeply buried security screw to open the case would have defeated all but the most pig-headed of repairers. I didn't 'choose' to have the case secured.
A washing machine main bearing is a common fail. Most people would have no idea until they call out the repair man whether such a repair is economic. Nearly all are technically replaceable but well over 60% of manufacturers use drums from one supplier with embedded bearings - replace the single bearing as a £20 part but if it's embedded in the drum it's a £150 full drum replacement ... add an hours labour and it's suddenly uneconomic ...
This is not the choice a purchaser makes but a minimise production costs / maximise profit by the manufacturer.
I must admit that 5G seems like bandwidth for bandwidth's sake to me too.
The mantra is "5 is bigger than 4! When do we need it? Now! Whatever it is...!"
Give me a good mobile signal of *any type* such that, wherever the caller and receiver are in the UK, the most basic voice signal did not drop out, squeak or warble and consigns the phrase "you're breaking up" to the bin of communication history and I'd be more than happy ...
5 makes more hype-money than 4. Good 2 across the entire country would be expensive ... So all things considered, and ignoring anyone who has yet to see a 4G signal, we obviously need 5 investment as fast as possible ...
I think you are missing the point. The people voted to leave and you (apparently) lost. Rightly or wrongly you live in a pseudo-democracy so the result is no longer something to argue the toss about and giving the jaw a rest at this point would be a good idea.
However, what all the people could reasonably expect was some level of leadership and competency from their Government which is something that Government have either deliberately failed to provide (set the system up to fail) or neglected to provide because the people's expectations of their Government, ie being competent, were too high ...
This, ironically, is nothing to do with leaving the EU per se, it's all to do with the Government being unable to do its job or properly structure and manage its IT systems.
Oh dear, not to mention mechanical master and slave linkages, master and slave cylinders in hydraulics and pneumatics, master and slave in sexual ... ahem ...
It would be interesting to know what "they" actually take offence at? The words, the historical usage of the words, the meaning of the words, the current usage of the words?
I had occasion many years ago to be on the end of a rant by someone who objected to the Les Dawson "northern women talking over the fence" sketches and wanted them immediately banned and Les banned from TV ... After much digging around his real objection, it turned out, was not actually because they were blokes in drag or because the sketches promoted stereotypes or because they used sexist language but because the characters were too "real" and prompted personal memories of his late mother!
In fact, in at least one workplace I know of, it is a formal disciplinary if you isolate when told to do so only by the app ... That includes if you are a teacher and an entire class has to isolate with multiple positive cases, the excuse being "our rules are that teachers social distance at all times" ... I still don't understand why cases are rising :-(
"He is also subject to a five-year serious crime prevention order "
WTF is that?
Do burglars get a "don't break the no burgling law for five years" or naughty bankers get a 'don't break no fraud laws for five years'? Why does he get a 'don't break any serious laws for five years'?
That is certainly the wierdest 'order' I've ever heard.
Literally update the heaters ... Heaters had fault tripped. Updated the "overly conservative" fault limits on the heater resistances in the propellant tanks remotely, booted them back up and, as of the last time I looked, all are currently full of hunky and doryness.
I would guess they're using the resistance of the heaters as a temperature sensor. They said it was a bit colder than the demo mission, so presumably the heaters were a bit lower resistance, the resistance 'spiked' then tripped the system into a lie mode.
When they said they were going to restart the heaters remotely it was scarily reminiscent of an out-of-crew-control "We'd like you to stir up the cryo tanks."
Long ago,
Perhaps in the jungles of Mexico,
"They" produced a computer, the Thinkpad Pro
It was used by the techs
and they loved it so ...
Rich were they,
the computer it cost but it was no Cray
Had a screen with some keys so they could play
Like an ipad, with keys
some descriptions say ...
Laptop it was
had a keyboard and trackpoint of fuzzy stuff
it worked forever and was strong stuff
but keyboards went out
and sales were tough ...
But now here it is
an iPad, a keyboard and other bits
to replace a Thinkpad with lots of fizz
all sparkles and bubbles and lovely foam
an ikea Thinkpad with an assembly quiz.
I see a number of carriages on a number of platforms each with an airlock - you airlock carriage 1 and send it off, meanwhile you load and airlock carriage 2 and send it off etc. so there's one tunnel and lots of embark/disembark points on the terminal platform. That would maximise the tunnel use, minimise the differential pressure stress on each vehicle as they can take longer to pressurise/depressurise each airlock. One tunnel and one platform at each end would just be crackers. The only real issue is how far apart you want to run the carriages - close makes more money but distance increases safety.
I must admit we used LO happily, importing a mailing list from a spreadsheet into a mail merge word processed document to produce formatted membership cards with a nice background image and a logo. Simple, easy, worked lovely and, as we had no money, cheap. Then an update meant only 10 images per file or formatting broke for the mail merged document ... that's only five cards and a lot of swearing when you have 200 to print ... update fixed it, then next update broke it again, two subsequent updates failed to fix it and we did the other thing ...
"...external auditor had explained that this "significant deficiency" is a "standard feature on all Oracle systems which is not ideal but very common".
So, if it's a "standard feature" why did they buy into a contract *knowing* it would not be suitable?
"Hello Oracle support, this product doesn't work."
"We know."
"But it doesn't do what I want it to do."
"Thankyou for your positive feedback, the Significant deficiency module is a standard feature supplied by Oracle which you paid a premium for."
With that kind of audit, misuse of public funds must have been whispered somewhere ...
I read
"The specific flaw exists within the parsing of HTML content in an email," explained Childs. "The issue results from the lack of proper validation of the length of user-supplied data"
and thought
"It's 2020 and apparently MS are still producing code that doesn't validate user data correctly and produces what reads like a classic buffer overflow condition which we tried to stop doing last century".
Why was I even surprised?
"the organisation seeks IT consulting, software development, computer-site planning consultancy, business analysis consultancy, information technology requirements review, accountancy, business management, HR, procurement, and business organisation services "
So they want a contractor to implement this new system *then* that contractor can tell them what new-new systems to implement? Sound like a chance to print money for a contractor ...
Actually you are incorrect.... try entering a leading zero number into a default Excel cell and it truncates the leading zero ('cause that's what it does) - if you then change the cell format to TEXT the leading zero is not there, the entered data has been parsed as a number, truncated and AFAIA the leading zeros are unrecoverable data.
The last thing a single user of a multi-user sheet wants to do is find that truncation happens on a single cell entry, take the sledgehammer approach of changing the entire column format (to text or whatever) to guarantee it never happens when actually it may have already done so ...
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