Posts by Voland's right hand

Re: Emojis... where's the one for *vomit* ?

There is a vomit emoji in Skype and unicode.

Re: "to the breast of their knowledge"

A cup of tea for them!

Make that two. D-size.

Re: Going back in time to modify history

I am really uncomfortable with the idea that the past or people can be forgotten. That's North Korea's job.

Two issues here.

1. People forgetting about things like conventions being spent.

2. People trying to fix 1 by applying various "rights to be forgotten".

There is no easy answer especially considering that penalties for any value of 1 are no longer of the form of "pay your debt to the society". So people, quite rightly, look at it and say - I do not give a damn that his/her conviction is spent.

Re: STEM

It's not difficult to provide the expertise & experience it just requires the will of business.

Absolutely identical observations while working for a UK company 2001-2007. No act of god would have been sufficient to make the CEO hire a UK graduate regardless of the fact that a back of the fag packet showed them to be ~ 60% of the cost of imports from soft and humid climes.

You need to port it first

The processor is homebrew - non-Intel. Risc architecture of some sort.

Re: Hit the US?

according to the rocket equation

What f***ing equation?

Orbital velocity by the station remnant - 8km/s. ~50-70% of orbital velocity by the interceptor - they do not reach full 8km/s. If you are lucky and you manage to match them perfectly head on - 12km/s relative. If not - you are still looking at > 8km/s. How much energy did the rocket expand is irrelevant. What is relevant is what speed did it reach relative to the target.

Let's assume 10kg (it is more) and we get a nice rounded number of 1.44 TeraJoules. One Kiloton is 4.88 Joules. So we are looking a nearly 300 tons of TNT equivalent. Even if it was just hitting at 8km/s you are still looking at > 100 tons equivalent.

There will be NOTHING left from the station if it hits. The "if it hits" is the big if - they do not have a very stellar record.

Re: Creepy...

Britain, the last country on the planet where newsagents still carry war-glorifying WWII-related comics for kids after 1960 ... 2018 and still the same ... so yeah ... hopeless

Britain is nowhere near the top of the scale on "Remember the War" syndrome. Your post makes it very clear that you have never been to Russia, especially around the 9th of May. Here is some educational material for you so you get an idea just how deep does it run there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7avPl6jB5w

It is not the only place either. I was in Monte Negro last summer. There were fresh flowers on the resistance graves at the Kolasin cemetery and there were still people paying their respect there - 70 years later.

Sure, you have idiots including ones we sponsor like the Bulgarian, Czech, Polish, Baltic, etc "democrats" that have constant erasure of history on the agenda. Even they have difficulty erasing it - it runs too deep. You can think of it as a grand canyon made by a river of blood. It will take millenia to fill it up even in places where people are actively working on doing this like Ukraine.

Re: Ah well...

Have you any idea the amount of paperwork involved in keeping someone in custody for 46 days?

There is a point when Indian police approach of force-feeding bananas under similar circumstances starts to seem more humane.

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

It does not matter which side of the 30 miles. The bits from failed launches as well as fairings, first stages, etc will all drop on top of France.

I thought the Napoleonic wars were over. Guess not...

Doesn't this just tell you that bullets are cheap?

Bullets are cheap. You do not fight a war with just bullets you know.

Artillery rounds are in the hundreds of pounds per shot range, maybe 1000s for large calibre or armour piercing rounds. An unguided missile is usually in the several grand zone. Guided missiles start at 10s of K and go into the millions for a cruise missile.

I am not sure if this number includes missiles. If it does, the British Army should not have enough money to run basic readiness exercises for anything but infantry.

Re: Fixed wing drones

Drones does not necessarily mean slow, weak quadcopters. Small fixed wing devices would be better, faster, smaller, carry a bigger payload further. Say 100km/hr for 50 km. Give them a gun or just explosive.

That is exactly what was used for the attack on the Russian base on Latakia.

But a swarm of drones is a different world.

The limit for number of simultaneously engaged targets in the most advanced missile systems out there is 40. That is where that number comes from. If you throw > 80 at at time against a target it is pretty much history.

Re: Can they do something more useful instead?

Since when has winter tyre and snow chain legislation existed in the UK?

That is my exact point. About time to introduce it. While there is no point making it mandatory for everyone, enforcing it specifically during warnings so that people heed the weather warning should do the job.

As far as the legislation it does exist. The definition of "roadworthy vehicle" is up to the court and IS dependent on the actual road conditions. There is precedent - plod can start handing out tickets for "non-roadworthy vehicle" because you took a car in summers out on a road in the middle of a blizzard. The last time it was done by either Lancashire or South Yorkshire about 12-15 years ago (cannot remember, it made the beeb - you can find it). All tickets were upheld in court.

However, instead of doing it once in a decade (and only when they get annoyed) it is better to codify it and get it done once and for all. If the met has said orange and you are in summers you really do not belong on the road. You are endangering everyone.

Can we stop this WW2 regurgitation nonsense. We are not in the late 1940-es and it is not that ID card.

The norm worldwide is to have a photo ID and to use it for the purpose of proving who are you on the voter roll. It is only US and UK continuing to fret on the subject about underrepresented minorities. Under-represented minorities also party on Ibiza you know and for that they need a passport (definitely was the case last time I flew there).

There are plenty of countries which are SIGNIFICANTLY more liberal and democratic despite having a National ID and requiring a photo ID for nearly everything including voting. For example - I have not noticed any Scandinavian country going to the dark side of fascism just yet.

It is not like the UK govt does not have at least several complete databases covering everyone from the cradle to the grave. Not having an expression of that in the form of ID is actually a HUGE extra cost which we pay for every time we deal with services, elections, credits, mortgages or even basic things like enforcing traffic offence tickets.

Re: Return of the Battleships?

Radar and AI controlled railguns could surely see the return of more guns on ships and perhaps bigger ships with lots more guns?

Not really. The range and killing power of a realistic naval railgun is the same as the cost and killing power of a modern multiple rocket launcher which costs a fraction of the cost per projectile and can fire cassette warheads with guided projectiles and observation drones (to see how well your bombardment is doing).

A converted trawler with a 9A52-4 (or its NATO counterpart) mounted on it costs less than 3 million per unit and in the several thousands to tens of thousands per shot, does not need an expensive power source and can be built "in quantity".

So if you actually CAN get within long range artillery range, long range artillery stops making sense. It is totally outgunned by battlefield rocket systems which cost peanuts and can be easily converted for marine use. The only reason they are not is because that would remove the justification for ridiculous pork projects like the gun on the Zumvalt class destroyers (which costs 1M per shell fired).

Re: Haha - back to the communist economical theory

What is communist about this ?.

The insistence that any element in a value chain does something productive and the application of financial instruments to do so and labelling anything that does not significantly increase the value of the goods as an economic parasite to be eradicated.

It is a cornerstone of modern Western economic theory that the amount of entities which goods and services pass through before they reach the consumer is irrelevant and the "economic parasite label" is something regurgitated from communist ideology. This is the whole idea behind VAT - to facilitate the smooth flow of goods and services across an arbitrary length of chains with the tax paid at the end (everyone else in-between gets a rebate).

The fact that we are labelling elements in the Holy VAT chain as parasites and using turnover tax to tackle the issue is as communist as communist gets. You can open any textbook from their 1980-es economics courses - there is a whole chapter on the subject singing odes to the virtues of turnover tax.

As I said before - the truth is somewhere in-between. In its pure form turnover tax is evil. Similarly, at the global level VAT is evil as you can always find a way of evading it. The truth is some combination of both - applied to every one so that the field is level.

Re: Still only 1080 Vertical

There is a limit to the usefulness of this strategy.

The amount of strain on your neck muscles from left-right movement is significantly less than the amount from left right.

I have a 2560x1440 32 inch monitor and it will be unusable if I turn it 90 degrees. My neck will need rehab by the end of the day as it is very difficult to force yourself to use only eye movement to look up/down.

If it was 27 or even 24 - maybe. At that size however, the advantages of higher res than 1920x1200 are rather slim - your eyes will strain too much.

If I ever have to extend the amount of video real estate I use it will probably be one or two small 1440x900 turned 90 degrees on the side. Once again, if there are more you get into diminishing returns from neck/eye movement.

"Well for one thing it's got three more letters.

Indeed - the verbiage is clearly increasing as time goes by...

Re: It is true that 5G will change everything?

unless every other lamp post is a basestation.

It will be a basestation.

Why are you resisting your location, breath rate, heart rate, blood sugar level, adrenalin level and blood pressure to be known in real time citizen? You are clearly a potentially subversive element, the reeducation task force has been dispatched to your location.

Re: 1984

Especially when your Echo ** suddenly becomes your always on 'Telescreen'

Why "when"? It already is - Alexa is included in the new Fire TV kit: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01ETRIFOW/ref=nav_shopall_k_FTVS

Re: Broadcom's nationality?

And the speculation of possible data exfiltration

I suggest you re-read your post.

When data exfo is discussed, the question is to whom :)

Re: In order to be bargained, it needs to exist

Unlikely, as the debris from the attack

What debris at >5M? It does not even need a warhead. mv² by itself is enough to vaporize whatever is left.

If it does not, their existing Tornado missile batteries at Latakia will clean up the area. That is one of the reasons they are there - to sterilize a spot where they have lost something which they do not want NATO to recover. They already use kit like that there in order for it to clock combat hours. For example - the Su-PAKFA fighters.

So far they have not needed to use "sterilize the area", but they are perfectly capable of doing it (without blowing up Chinese embassies "by mistake" as a collateral).

Re: If it wasn't for peeps like me, you wouldn't need diversitee

Ask your parents what secretaries were.

Some of us are old enough to remember (put some joke alert tags on your post next time by the way).

To the ones not old enough - the secretary is a mythical minor deity, which while fickle and capricious at times could usually be pacified by a box of chocolates and some flowers.

Primary purpose of this minor deity - to ensure that the bosses tantrums, jerk attitude and overall arseholeness is buffered and tuned down before it is unleashed on his direct reports. They were the lubricant which made an old style company work. Unfortunately as with any deity, their power was proportional to the belief in them. As we do not believe in them any more they have waned and disappeared as ghosts into the twilight.