Posts by Kernel 767 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Nov 2011
"Do we really need "notifications to manage food imports"?"
So, that'll be horse-burgers for everyone again, will it?
I understand that the Chinese (or at least some of the dodgier Chinese sources) can do you a good line in imitation rice or eggs.
Of course you need to be able to track and manage food imports - the days of writing off a few dead people to 'shit happens' are over in most of the world.
"If you don't have a house cleaning, you fill up with bottom raters."
Depends where you are - in NZ (and many other countries I suspect) you don't make people redundant, you must make their position redundant.
Making a person redundant and then employing someone else in the same or similar role gets real expensive once the newly unemployed have got you in front of an employment tribunal - so much so that I've know even a big company to settle privately with individuals, rather than go the tribunal route.
I've also been involved in downsizing exercises in the past - I personally found having to decide who goes and who stays, especially when it's people you've known and worked with for a number of years, to be very stressful and having significant impact on my outside-of-work life and relationships. This is the major reason I stopped chasing management roles quite a few years ago.
"They were dumped in a field one town over, and the people that found them didn't want to end up paying for disposal in their taxes so they re-dumped them in your town?"
I believe there is precedent for this , dating back to the 11th century.
The Norman invaders of England, in an attempt to reduce the numbers of dead Normans blotting the landscape, apparently passed a law that, in theory at least, would result in a significant fine for the Saxon village nearest to said dead Norman.
I have read that what was actually achieved was a lot of late night re-dumping of dead Normans on some other villages patch in an attempt to mitigate the cost to the local taxpayers.
"rotating the 'spare' units into service every few months, to keep something like this from happening again"
My experience with ringing generators suggests that this is an excellent way of ensuring all units fail due to the same mechanical wear within a few days of each other. We stopped swapping 'spares' into service after that, instead just doing a changeover to ensure the spare worked and then changing back again to the normally working unit.
"Most user of Android phone are lucky to get one update, if any, even from new."
Things are slowly starting to change - all three Nokias in our house have had 10 updates so far this year and I anticipate at least another one, if not two before the end of the year (the December update will probably arrive mid-Janurary).
"If you mention the Sykes-Picot agreement, it's WW1, not WW2."
You're correct, that was the agreement I was thinking off - I probably confused reading about Lawrence's WW1 role with another book about his slightly different role in the RAF during WW2, cunningly disguised as Aircraftsman Ross.
"So there was Ibn Saud, who created the House of Saud in '32 with a bit of help from a certain Empire (not the Ottoman). "
Yes, I was sort of surprised, when reading T E Lawrence's biography, to learn that the current structure of the Middle East came about not because of ancient tribal boundaries and traditional leadership roles (as any normal person might assume), but as a result of a meeting between a couple of businessmen (British and French, IIRC) during WW2, who decided to split up the area and assign political leadership based on how the most money could be made by their respective countries after the war. Apparently all advice from people such as Lawrence, who actually knew the tribes and the region, was pretty much ignored as not tending to maximize future profits.
"Seriously? He's there by choice. It's their "house" and their rules. You need more downvotes."
Actually it's a significantly more than their "house" - legally it's their country, their rules - I do agree with you regarding down votes.
His visitors need to remember they are not visiting him in someone's office, they are effectively traveling to another country to make the visit and that country can pretty much impose whatever rules they like at their border crossing (front door).
"The critical bit would then be takeoff / landing, which could be mandated to be exactly vertical only over the designated landing area."
That'll be a definite success - there's good reason why helicopters normally aim to get as much forward speed as they can as soon as their feet are off the ground and it's not because the pilot wants to show how clever they are.
There's a thing called, I believe, the 'deadman's curve' in regard to helicopters which plots the relationship between height and the required forward speed to successfully initiate auto-rotation at that height - protracted vertical ascents/descents with zero forward speed mean you spend far too long on the less desirable side of this graph.
From the dim, dark, memories of my past which involved many happy hours fixing faults on manual telephone exchanges, the one thing that I don't recall giving any trouble were the wiring looms connecting the relays behind each individual switchboard position,
The relays were mounted on hinged gates, which had to be opened every time a cord needed to be replaced ie., far too bloody often for my taste! The wiring loom for these was about 50mm in diameter and was much older than I was, even back then, but wires in the loom never broke, regardless of how often the gate was opened.
The secret to making this sort of thing work correctly is to run the wires along the length of the hinge and clamp each end to one of the hinged pieces. This way you end up with a firmly held straight loom, with the only motion being a twisting along the length of the hinge, rather than a bending motion which will rapidly work-harden the conductors and cause them to snap.
All of the admittedly few laptops I have stuck my nose into seem to use a similar arrangement.
Not even as just a dumb tether, with VPN thrown in for good measure? How do you use your work device abroad otherwise?"
Well, if JohnFen is anything like me when it comes to separating work and personal connectivity, and I suspect he is, work devices connect via work provided cellphones, not via my own kit, VPN or not.
"In London you don't dial the 020. You do dial the rest of that. So putting up a notice, or a leaflet or a sign, or the side of a van with 0207 123 4567 is just plain wrong. ."
It's only a problem because your telcos haven't set up their translation tables properly - the correct way to do it is to look at the originating number (the real one, not the one presented to the callee) and the dialed number and then insert or delete leading digits as required. This was standard practice over 30 years ago when I was involved in writing translation tables - in fact, it even goes back earlier in a limited form to electro-mechanical exchanges (eg., the BPO's director controlled step-by-step systems), so it certainly pre-dates rocket science
"It's also impossible to charge duty on electricity used to drive a car without charging duty on other electricity. "
May I introduce you to New Zealand's Road User Charges scheme?
Here fuels such as diesel and LPG are not taxed at the pump like petrol is, instead you have to buy "mileage" at a rate which varies according to the weight of the vehicle, number of axles, etc., trucks, private cars, a diesel motorbike should you happen to own one.
At the moment electric vehicles are exempt, but that was only ever going to be the case for a limited time.
You don't want to get caught without a current road user charges certificate either - it's a tax revenue rather than traffic offense, so apart from the fact that it can attract some pretty severe penalties there is the undesirable side-effect of bringing your name to Inland Revenue's attention. It's also virtually impossible to sell a vehicle if the road user charges aren't paid up to date as well - the current registered owner is responsible regardless of who actually failed to pay, so nobody in their right mind will go near anything that hasn't been paid up to date.
"There's plenty of phosphorus in the Earth's crust so no need to look for extra-terrestrial origins. Oh, silly me. There is. Publications."
My reading of the article is that it is known that elemental phosphorus is created in massive stars, so any phosphorus present on earth must have an extra-terrestrial origin, presumably by way of earth being made from material scattered by the explosion of one or more suitably massive stars.
"Pho's NSA's intentional, reckless, and illegal retention immoral suppression of highly classified information software vulnerabilities over the course of almost five many years has placed at risk our intelligence personal and business community’s computing capabilities and methods, rendering some of them unusable and causing billions of dollars in consequent damages and clean up costs in all parts of the world's economy,"
There, FTFY.
Many years ago, back when I worked for a telco, I was given the job of replacing a noisy fan tray in the processor module of a NEAX61E-VS (very small) digital exchange, the purpose of which was to provide the 0800 service for a smallish country.
Unlike its big brother, the NEAX 61E, the VS version had both of the hot-standby processors in a single module, rather than two separate modules.
What wasn't made very clear in the procedural documentation was that the 50v power feed to processor modules was via relays which were held operated by a signal from the module's fan tray - obviously to shut the processor down should the fans ever fail. As it turned out, this was a fine concept for the 61E, but not so clever for the VS version.
So, having undone the retaining screws I carefully removed the fan tray, only to be greeted by a distinct lack of blinky lights on the processor consoles and the cards which filled the processor module.
By the time I worked through the convoluted boot process (by modern standards) and then loaded the core software followed by the latest data backup (all from tape cartridge) people had most certainly become aware of my activities.
No point in posting as an AC for this, it was all documented and acknowledged at the time.
"avoided any dictatorships since that nasty Cromwell business "
I believe Cromwell was actually asked to accept the crown and become king (as a replacement for Charlie 1) , but he refused.
Let's also not forget that a bit further down the track you also over-threw your anointed king (James ?) and invited a young Dutch couple over to fill the vacancy left thereby.
I've always thought more should be made of the annual GuyFawkes celebrations - they should serve as a timely annual reminder to politicians of exactly who they work for and whose interests they should hold paramount.
"avoided any dictatorships since that nasty Cromwell business "
I believe Cromwell was actually asked to accept the crown and become king (as a replacement for Charlie 1) , but he refused.
Let's also not forget that a bit further down the track you also over-threw your anointed king (James ?) and invited a young Dutch couple over to fill the vacancy left thereby.
I've always thought more should be made of the annual GuyFawkes celebrations - it should serve as a timely annual reminder to politicians of exactly who they work for and whose interests they should hold paramount.
"Not true. Canada does not have a national identity card."
Neither does NZ nor, as far as I'm aware, Australia - I suspect many countries with a history of overwhelmingly English settlement over the past two or three centuries don't have a national ID card.
I wonder why that might be?
Of course, the good thing from a poliltician's point of view is that basing an ID system on an NHS number means it only has to apply to the insignificant people who can't afford private healthcare - win (plus gin & tonics) all 'round.
"@I ain't Spartacus, exactly how close were you following that rescue in Malaysia (sic)?!"
About as closely as you've been following the twat's tweets would be my guess - you appear to be unaware of last week's outpourings on the same subject.
I've yet to see any news of apologies and remorse for his latest allegations.
"Are you sure the wild boar wasn't just a scapegoat?"
It's possible - given that the permanent population of Whangamomana is most accurately expressed by the well recognised mathematical term "bugger all", a cover-up would not be too difficult to arrange.
This is the sort of place it is - at the Republic Day celebrations I attended one of the major attractions was a bloke with a ute full of dead possums, with which he entertained the crowd by giving demonstrations on how to skin said possums - for $5 he would teach you or your kids how to do the skinning. I'm guessing he needed to skin them anyway and though he may as well try and make a few bucks extra along the way.
Note for the rest of the world: In NZ possums are a pest species and once you have caught one your only legal options are to kill it or have someone else kill it for you - the case is slightly different in Australia, where they seem to be keen on protecting and encouraging the smelly things.
For many years a (extremely) small settlement in NZ has had an annual election of President - IIRC the Republic of Whangamomana came into to being when the residents of said settlement and surrounding area objected to the government's imposition of summer time on the country.
I was present at the election of one president who was tragically killed during his term of office while participating in a wild pig hunt - just why a toy poodle (the president) wanted to go pig hunting is one of those mysteries that may never be solved.
"Shoot me now. Please, someone. Just end it before it gets any worse."
I see you suffer from a common internet problem - the assumption that because you have no use case for such a device nobody else can possibly have a valid reason for wanting one.
Most of the use cases I've heard of for these involve controlling stuff from a little further away that the other side of the room - although personally I'd only ever connect one at home behind the VPN server.
"I would say the time spent by language teachers to force upon you their version of a poem's interpretation is a waste of time."
Aah yes, good old English lit' lesson one: When they ask for your opinion of a particular poem, "It's a load of shit!" is not the answer they are looking for, especially if it was written by characters with weird names like "Shakespeare", "Doone", "Browning" etc.
"Try paying by cash on a London bus and let me know how you get on."
I also know a bar where you're going to be very thirsty - although I have heard that they may, if you're lucky and they're in the right mood, accept cash - but don't expect any change from whatever size note you hand over for that beer.
It's all made clear on the sign as you enter the bar that it is 'cashless'.
The way it works in New Zealand is that whoever lays the cable, fibre or copper, has to let any provider who asks use it at the same cost as they charge against their own retail arm to use it. About the only preferential pricing allowed is for the end customer, where you normally get a small discount in the monthly cost if you take your phone service and internet from the same provider - not that you have to have a phone service to get internet if you don't want one.
So far I've had three different ISPs offering to run fibre from the street into my house and provide me with service, although the fibre infrastructure in this area was laid by a fourth company who as far as I'm aware don't actually sell internet services at all.
"I know I shouldn’t feed the trolls but;
A. Yes I do.
B. Yes I do.
And C. Er, Yes I do."
As someone who can also answer 'yes' to A and B, I have also worked in a telco that had a pair of Cesium clocks at the top of its clock distribution - this was fairly common back in the day.
I know that the telco I worked for changed its top level clocks to GPS sourced some years ago (selling the Cesium clocks back to the manufacturer) - whether this is a good long term strategy or not I'm not sure.
Clock distribution should be a fairly serious subject in any telco worthy of the name and the clock distribution network must be treated as a separate design and build exercise to the actual traffic carrying, revenue earning, network. Clocking loops and/or avoidable clocking degradation are bad things.
"Beaver College changed its name to Arcadia University in part because of overeager web filters, with smutty jokes providing the rest of the motivation."
Yes - surprisingly my 5yo grandson, newly started school, is allowed to call his teacher by her first name - it seems even at that age children can do far too much with a name like Mrs Bottomley.
"That is a violation of rule 1 & 2 of the BOFH book, Rule 1 being "We don't talk about Luser-installed network attached hardware", and Rule 2 being "We don't talk about what happens to Lusers who install network attached hardware"."
And Rule 3 is "Try to remember that many of those 'Lusers' will be the people who actually generate revenue for the company so it can continue to exist and employ those who are merely a cost centre and weight around the ankle of said Lusers."
Just because someone isn't an IT expert doesn't make them stupid or ignorant or a Luser - it just means they probably know a whole lot of specialized stuff you don't - even if it's only how to shovel shit out of the gutter 5 days a week without ruining their back in the process. Shoveling shit brings money into the company when the customer pays for it to be done.
Yes, I know you used the joke icon, but I've seen some crap work from IT professionals who should've know better, over the years - if fact, a number of the major data leakages we read about on El Reg seem to involve a degree of incompetence on the part of those professionals who should know better, particularly in the area of failing to secure/configure deployed systems properly.
"One thing missing here. How did they control the air gapped system? It could cause an issue immediately or after a time delay, but both this degrades the system, but does not control it. "
If they have access to enough of a national network and can drop a few of the larger generators at the same time, the grid operator will lose control of the frequency - and when that happens the entire network has to be shut down and started form scratch.
A few of years ago I was at a national grid operator's operations centre, doing support on their comms equipment and I was invited to sit in on one of their induction sessions. Apart form seeing soime great foo0tage of what can go wrong when switching high voltages and why you don't use water on a transformer fire, there was an interesting discussion of how long it takes to bring a power network up from a 'black start' - even for a small country like NZ the answer is in days rather than hours, as the connected load has to be carefully matched to the on line generation capacity in order to prevent another loss of control of frequency event.
What better time to launch a nuclear attack?
"Also, why does the cable get thinner further out into the Altlantic?"
As the cable gets deeper it has less protection - shore end cable can be 100mm or more in diameter, deep sea sections are often 25mm with no external protection at all.
At various times in its career the cable has to be suspended off the arse end of a ship - when there's up to 10km of briny underneath that's an awful lot of cable hanging off the thing you're living on at the time, so you want it to be as light as possible. One of the specs of submarine cable is the 'modulus', which is basically a measure of how much cable can be supported by the cable before it snaps under its own weight. This effectively determines how deep it can be laid.
"Unlike normal lasers which have mirrors on both ends to have an ever growing avalance of photons, you don't have mirrors there, but send in your signal on one side, and it comes out amplified on the other side."
The most common amps are Erbium Doped Fire Amplifiers (EDFAs) which consist of a short (few metres) length of fibre doped with the mildly radioactive element Erbium.
This section of fibre is connected in series with the working fibre and is also feed with energy from 'pump lasers', whcih are solid state lasers operating at a slightly different wavelength to the working passband of the amplifier.
The energy from the pump lasers causes some electrons in the Erbium atoms to jump up a couple of energy levels - they almost immediately spontaneously drop back one level ( emitting random photons which appear as noise in the amplifier output) but are reasonably stable in the intermediate level. An incoming photon from the optical signal strikes one of these electrons, which causes the electron to drop back to its base energy level, in the process emitting a photon which is identical to the original photon which crashed into it - as the original photon is not destroyed by the collision, you now have two identical photons in place of the original one - repeat this many times and you have a working optical amplifier.
Other doping agents can be used, but Erbium is the one that works best in the long range 1550nm band.
Raman pumps are useful on long spans that are otherwise unamplified, but can cause issues due to the high power levels involved (I've worked on Raman systems that transmitted an pump wavelength at +28dBm up the receive fibre) due to secondary effects which add to the noise and signal distortion - not to mention a tendency to do things like destroy connectors if there is even the slightest trace of dirt in them.
"So the deep sea cable is about 1" in diameter typically, with a hefty copper conductor to power the torpedo string."
The copper conductor isn't as heavy as you might suspect - it's normally just a thin tube of about 8mm (guestimate, as I no longer have a piece here to measure) diameter surrounding the inner core of fibres and steel protection wires. Each amp (connected in series) normally requires about 2 amps at 50 volts, so the ability to handle high voltage is more of an issue than the current involved - if memory serves, the cable insulation is rated at 25kV and I've seen one installation that was feeding positive 14kV from one end and negative 14kV from the other. The circuit between landing stations is completed via the 'sea earth' at each landing station.
"Whenever I read stories about undersea cables I am reminded that the only institutions equipped to sever them are navies,"
And any passing trawler, ship with its anchor dragging, etc. Even a recreational fisherman can get an anchor caught and cause grief and consternation even if it doesn't result in an outage.
I've even been involved in an event where a thruster was pushed through the land section of a cable, breaking some of the fibres but, more importantly, tripping out the power feeding resulting in the repeaters (it was an older cable) ceasing to function so even if some fibres did survive they were of no use.
"Probably because if the true scale of this was actually known, any responsible parent would lock their child in a panic room and never let an adult (or anybody with a two digit age) near them."
Unless the UK is vastly different to the rest of the world, the most common child abuser seems to be a parent, other relative, family friend/known to the family - if only it were as simple as the much promoted "stranger danger", with all the simplicity of identifying potential risks that concept provides.
"Probably because if the true scale of this was actually known, any responsible parent would lock their child in a panic room and never let an adult (or anybody with a two digit age) near them."
Unless the UK is vastly different to the rest of the world, the most common child abuser seems to commonly be a parent, other relative or family friend/known to the family - if only it were as simple as the much promoted "stranger danger".
"Fancy fibre network with redundant links between two nodes. Unfortunately they were laid in the same ducting, so links not redundant when someone else trenches the street without checking what's in the ground..."
In the past I've worked with a transport system which had full protection at the optical layer - on two different wavelengths of the same DWDM system ie., not even different fibres in the same cable sheath which, if carefully chosen to be on opposite sides of the central strength member, can give a small measure of protection, but on the same fibre pair.
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