Re: B'stard
Never buy a battery from a sailor; that's (wait for it!) a Salt and battery...
Posts by cortland
1167 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Mar 2012
Welcome to my world of The Unexplained – yes, you're welcome to it
Has your spouse stayed on after Mobile World Congress? This sex doll brothel might be why
COP BLOCKED: Uber app thwarted arrests of its drivers by fooling police with 'ghost cars'
Teach undergrads ethics to ensure future AI is safe – compsci boffins
Humanity needs you... to build an AI bot that can finger rotten headlines
BOFH: Password HELL. For you, mate, not for me
Height of stupidity: Heathrow airliner buzzed by drone at 7,000ft
Thursday 26th January 2017 16:31 GMT
Re: Am I wrong in thinking that if ..
Heat accumulated during time on the ground without having the air-stream carry it away is a plausible cause for increased failures, on routes of mostly short-hop flights. especially if the engines are kept turning while loading and unloading passengers, baggage, and cargo.
Windows 10 nags, Dirty Cow, Microsoft's Linux man love: The Reg's big ones for 2016
Lad cuffed after iOS call exploit knocks out Arizona 911 center
Oracle finally targets Java non-payers – six years after plucking Sun
Not OK Google: Tree-loving family turns down Page and pals' $7m
Sysadmin told to spend 20+ hours changing user names, for no reason
HMS Illustrious sets sail for scrapyard after last-ditch bid fails
The UK's Investigatory Powers Act allows the State to tell lies in court
Wednesday 7th December 2016 19:43 GMT
This could be interesting
It would be interesting to see someone accused of committing a crime when he was unconscious in hospital and not able to enter that as evidence in his defense. On the other hand, the existence of the ability to lie with impunity opens the prosecution up to the accusation that nothing it says can be trusted.
Drops the mic... Hang on, hackers could be listening through my headphones?
HP Inc CEO Dion: Whey-hey, we're on the pull
Ex-soldier slapped with sex offender order after flouting private browsing mode ban
Two new dinosaurs walked from South America to Australia, via Antarctica
Czech, mate: Cops cuff Russian bloke accused of LinkedIn mega-hack
AI software should be able to register its own patents, law prof argues
The exploding Note 7 is no surprise – leaked Samsung doc highlights toxic internal culture
Friday 14th October 2016 13:02 GMT
Re: When Tandy computers
I got to Tandy in 1989 or so, and working in R&D was a fantastic job, even if I did have to bark back at my manager from time to time. But they never sold enough computers (only marketed to their own stores -- and DEC, with that firm's nameplate) to reliably profit from building them.
And where else could I ever claim credit for a software compatibility lab's engineers all having to sit on wet seat cushions? For Origami ribbon cables? For an unpowered electric coffee-warmer (NOT our set-top-box) changing the colors on a TV set in the boardroom?
If you know things others don't, and can imagine what they can't, they'll think it magic ...
And without either a degree or engineering coursework. I had FUN!
Friday 14th October 2016 12:16 GMT
When Tandy computers
When Tandy's computer business was having trouble showing a profit in the mid to late 1990s, cost reduction assumed a much more important role in its planning, and Samsung offered Tandy what it it called a "strategic partnership".
After some time, this strategic partnership turned into a takeover, one of whose first overt symptoms was the replacement of 6 foot cubicle partitions with much shorter ones, the objective being to have each manager identify who was sitting at his or her computer at precisely 8 AM
It was when I learned that – as one of the engineering team – I was no longer allowed to make changes necessary to meet regulatory and performance requirements, and that only Korean engineers had that authority; it was then that I decided to leave AST, and as the full impact of the Korean management philosophy descended on the others it appears they all decided "the handwriting on the wall" was in Korean. An article on the AST bankruptcy once described what happened then as a "mass exodus of talent."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AST_Research
My next job was at a telecommunications manufacturer specializing in the digital loop to subscriber equipment. It was a very good job, one with a good deal of responsibility, and I enjoyed it – and when that firm was acquired by a French multinational, those conditions did not change.
Those were the times, my friend…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecom_Valley
Student software finds new Minor Planet found way out beyond Pluto
Samsung puts out battery fire (no, not that one)
Thursday 13th October 2016 09:05 GMT
Days of fire
Who once sold a monochrome CRT monitor that apparently would emit smoke if f the computer used allowed higher resolutions to be set than the monitor power supply could support.
Whose 5MB HDD [for the Tandy 2000] acted similarly (unless modified*) because the stopped/stalled motor surge current was too high for the windings.
* IIRC, the fix was a series resistor that required a number of those HDD's be twisted back and forth to break stiction and start up.
Good. Quick. Cheap You only get TWO at a time.
Ludicrous Patent of the Week: Rectangles on a computer screen
Mercedes answers autonomous car moral dilemma: Yeah, we'll just run over pedestrians
Thursday 13th October 2016 08:39 GMT
Re: Would it pass the Kobayashi Maru?
"My understanding is that hitting moose can be very bad for the occupants of the car."
Heard on a Amateur Radio net one night; a Washington State net member in a backwoods SUV missed his turn in the conversation and came back in as the net was closing to explain why; a moose had decided charging an oncoming SUV would be fun.
I don't know if he got to keep the meat, but the vehicle was a write-off.
Smell burning? Samsung’s 'Death Note 7' could still cause a contagion
Speaking in Tech: Making $1bn profit from a $10m investment? We'll take it
Boy, 12, gets €100k bill from Google after confusing Adwords with Adsense
Forgive me, father, for I have used an ad-blocker on news websites...
Microsoft disbands Band band – and there'll be no version 3
I want to launch thousands of drones, says Facebook's flying Wi-Fi router chief
Tuesday 4th October 2016 12:30 GMT
Can we
Put up barrage balloons in our back yards? Oh, it'll be a nuisance, and expensive, too, blowin' up all them balloons at night just to be sure of our privacy, but worth it to keep the drones out of our yards...
Be sure to put Aluminium foil strips under 'em, mind, to confuse the microwaves. Heh, heh, heh.
Regulatory compliance problems? Promontory, my dear Watson
Tuesday 4th October 2016 12:19 GMT
Re: real challenges still facing human civilisation – regulatory compliance.
Called out of retirement, to fix a technical problem in a product, I told my manager that the problem wasn't technical, but structural.
When there are several competing managers telling one engineer to do three different things before the next day's conference call; when it will take three days to assemble the test equipment, and when they will have changed their minds by the next day anyway; that's not technical at all!
As the outside expert, I was listened to somewhat more readily than I would have been were I still on the payroll; I told them the objective was to put equipment in the customer's hands and what they kindly let the engineer do that.
They've yet to call me back again!
Tuesday 4th October 2016 12:08 GMT
So now the humans
So now the humans will not have to read them.; Goodie they are already ignoring a great many of the, and now they can claim ignorance.
I spent a few decades working in electromagnetic compliance. What is that? Our electronics is not supposed to interfere with our radio and television; reception and if we have a transmitter our computer is not supposed to shut down whenever wiki the Mike. That is a pretty course reading of things but it is.
Computers can't make that happen. Computers cannot make manufacturers leave parts out because it is hard to put them in, or to expensive, or are hard to find. Computers cannot make manufacturers perform incoming quality tests on the parts they do buy and statistically valid outgoing tests on products they make. Computers cannot make businesses protect the public from their own products.
Now, if we could get computers to replace lawyers…
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
-- Kipling
Did last night's US presidential debate Wi-Fi rip-off break the law?
The law is an ass: Mooning banned at arse end of the world
Lethal 4-hour-erection-causing spiders spill out of bunch of ASDA bananas
Asian hornets are HERE... those honey bee murdering BASTARDS
Thursday 22nd September 2016 09:37 GMT
Re: Killing bees at the rate of 40 per minute?
You can get 100 round drum magazines, but here's a test someone a ran manually loading 30 and 50 round (drum )magazines into a modified AR – 15 on full automatic. He used up most of the table full of ammunition before the barrel failed at 830 rounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSizVpfqFtw
Apple seeks patent for paper bag - you read that right, a paper bag
Upstart AI dreams of 'disrupting' digital marketing – with sex
Post-Brexit UK.gov must keep EU scientists coming, say boffins
Google hover-drones to drop burritos on campus
It's time for humanity to embrace SEX ROBOTS. For, uh, science, of course
Of supermarkets, Volkswagen and the future of Dell-EMC
Microsoft thought of the children and decided to ban some browsers
$329 for a MacBook? Well, really a 'HacBook' built on an old HP
John Ellenby, British inventor of the first laptop, powers off
Friday 2nd September 2016 20:31 GMT
I was there when...
AFTER Tandy acquired GriD, and after it sold its whole computer business to AST Research, I got to work on FCC qualification of the GriD convertible, a clever laptop whose screen could be pivoted on its hinges to cover the normal keyboard and allow operation with Microsoft Windows for Pen. A number of them were sold, too. An RF-emitting pen device could be detected by electrodes in the screen, and it was a decent enough laptop for its time, if a bit of a power hog. I'd worked on worse GriD's, tho..
A color version was in development when AST was taken over by Samsung and basically imploded.
Sic transit etcetera ...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
