Posts by Charles Manning

Building false expectations

This change to ICT gives people a very warped idea of what computer technology is about. Computer science is one of very few fields where the universities expect that the students have absolutely no experience and indeed have very strange expectations of what the subject is about.

My son is in first year computer science and I had a discussion with one of his lecturers, which provided some alarming stats:

Of the intake, around 6% had done a lot of programming, about half had never programmed and the rest had done a little programming.

Computer science has the highest failure rate of any first year subject in the science/engineering area.

First year doesn't really get into proper computer science. It is really there to weed out those with the aptitude and desire from those who thought: "Hey I like playing with Facebook, maybe I should study computer science."

Given that so few kids actually go into university with any understanding of what CS is about, it is no wonder.

I want a CC limited to only certain countries

The further problem with CC handling is that there is no limit on where a CC gets processed. Hand over a CC number and it can get charged anywhere.

To counter this, many customers would likely prefer to have a CC that can only be charged in certain countries, as specified by the customer. That way we get to limit how our CCs are used.

I'd limit mine to the country where I live and a few where I do internet charging. I would not want my CC processed anywhere else.

Make it the banks' problem. They'll soon make something work.

Quintillions of milliwatts

See there is a use for that number.

While Intel might actually be able to make SOCs, the real challenge is going to be to handle diversity and customer demand.

ARM do that by making cores and allowing others to take those cores and design their own chips and getting those fabbed wherever. Doing this requires an infrastructure that supports such customization.

Unless Intel have the ability to allow their customers to specify custom chips they will never play this game.

Intel are also formed around the idea of making really high margin chips. If margins come down to a dollar or so per chip will they still be able to keep their heads above water?

But....

You need FB and Bing to tell you that they are your friends..

It's not even an e-car

It's an e-quad-bike. Only one small step up from an e-scooter. Will it get any grant at all?

Look down at the baggage in the hold

What a view!

And unfortunately the step can be quite small

Prior art on a full-size keyboard is suddenly novel if applied to a cell phone.

Enjoying?

Until a few weeks back, the Skype client on ubuntu crashed as soon as a call was established.

Excellent!

A big problem with HPs is that all the scientifics are programmable and thus cannot be used for some exams. That really sucks for anyone who is used to RPN and needs to use a Casio etc.

Sinclair Scientific sounds like an option.

Yeah sure, but

Don't they train their pilots to handle this sort of flying? Of course they do.Perhaps the pilot has trained on a regular Blackhawk and this new extra-blade version handles very differently.

Or of course it could have just crashed for numerous reasons or have been shot down.

Design patent, not utility patent

Apple is annoyed because they have a design patent for a particular look and style which Samsung is copying.

This is not at all the same as a utility patent.

Exactly correct

Here is Christchurch NZ we had the twitterati reporting on the recent earthquakes. Much of what was said and was harvested by media was complete crap. Reports of certain buildings falling down that were unscathed and later had to be withdrawn.

At least reporters have some training and know to distinguish between rumour and verifiable reports but the unwashed masses don't care about that when trying to get their tweet out and be the centre of attention.

Of course at the end of the day it really does not seem to matter. News is no longer concerned with conveying fact. It is far more interested in drama and competing with other entertainment on TV etc. Poor young journalists who sign up to a career modeled on Woodward and Bernstein and end up just generating punchy headlines to attract clicks and eyeballs.

Fanboi lost his logic?

"But then bashing something has greater dramatic effect if the tone of the editorial is such that it appears you have no alternative."

He was bashing Unity because it is crap and not ready.

Saying Unity is fine because you can replace it with classic gnome would seem as daft as saying Windows Vista is fine because you can replace it with XP.

ARM != Advances Risc Machine

Even if it did stand fro that in the past, ARM is now just ARM and means nothing.

11.04's "killer app"

is definitely Ubuntu Classic

What the hell is it with these UI people? KDE3 was easy to use. KDE4 introduced a whole lot of abstractions that might make sense to UI theoreticians but make no sense to Joe and Jane Punter.

Unity seems like the Ubuntu attempt to to KDE4.

For illuminting cockpits

Many governments are trying to crack down on those green lasers sued to dazzle pilots.

These spark plug lasers must be pretty intense and will be stocked by every car parts outlet. Won't they make night flying a bit more fun?

Not very difficult.

A car using 10l/100km (28mpg UK) will emit approx 230g CO2/km. 5 tons is around 20,000 km.

Manned space flight: politics, not science

Hats off to Gagarin and and his orbital brethren, but manned flights to the moon and beyond have always been political moves - not scientific ones.

Orbital platforms (ISS etc) give us an interesting platform for some science, but going to the moon was motivated purely by the political goal of beating the Russians at something during in the cold war - to give the USians something to crow about.

It is ridiculous to send a man to do a robot's job. The Russians knew this from day one. The Russians missions to the moon gathered as much science (photos, rocks, sensor measurements) as the yanks. Robots allow you to do things far more efficiently and experimentally - no bodies to worry about.

What the yanks wanted though was a picture of guys in white saluting the Stars and Stripes.

It is not at all surprising that once Apollo 11 had fulfilled the political goal of putting a man on the moon and bringing him back, the Apollo mission lost all its lustre. Apollo 13 would have had no more interest than ST116 if it had not had all the drama of men stuck in space.

It is harvesting waste

If you just open the tap and let the water gush out then the energy is just turned into heat and sound. The pump still works the same because it still pressurizes x amount of water to the same delivery pressure.

Exactly the same happens with one of those pressure reduction valves.

The only (slight) difference is that the heat generated by the high velocity water has been reduced and thus you will set the water temp slightly higher and your water heater will have to work harder.

Not if the power is signed with a Nissan authentication key

If it is Nissan brand power then it just charges.

Sue the USPTO, not the companies

The USPTO will continue to crank out crap patents until they get to be held responsible. Uncle Sam loves them because they actually generate federal income. The only measure being applied to the USPTO is number processed and how much cash they generate.

If the USPTO had to bear the costs of defending crap patents then the quality might improve.

And turns into...

Plant food.

It's a common myth

The logic: Anyone can get to and modify the source code - including malicious people. Therefore it is easy to inject back doors etc into open source code. Therefore open source cannot be trusted.

Get knowledge before speaking

"And won't my hard work be pirated due to the wild west "open" nature of the Android app space?"

No. You don't have to release the source to your apps or give them away for free. No real difference between Andoid apps and others.

"Which version??" Most of the core functionality is the same. I still download apps for my G1 that work the same on my Nexus1.

Do you really believe that WinMo7 will give you a future proof platform? Every WinPhone version has changed the APIs. Of course MS are quite slow at getting their act together so WinMo7 will likely still be their latest offering in 2015.

Same as 555 phone numbers

They use fictional numbers to prevent being hassled by the owners of the real IP address.

This is **ENTERTAINMENT**. Don't expect fact.

Don't expect boring sifting through logs etc. Expect some wizzy 3D graphics that show a connection going red.

The bad news is that this distort expectations like CSI has. Every crime can be solved in 30 minutes - minus ad breaks. Pointy-haired-boss will expect any intrusion can be sorted in the same amount of time.

No low-tech alternative for timing

GPS is near ubiquitous use in high precision timing is far more worrysome than anything loss of navigation.

GPS provides accurate timing down to tens of nanoseconds. Nothing else comes close (except for Galeleo and GLONAS).

Radio time signals, NTP etc are orders of magnitude away and are not good enough for high precision timing.

No more cell phones. No more broadband. That's where the real dark ages will come from.