Posts by David Roberts

About ball mice....

Anyone else remember a tiny ball mouse which would clip to the side of a laptop keyboard?

Wonderful idea but haven't seen one for decades.

Congrats

Makes NASA look a bit pedestrian.

Was it Trump?

Sounds vaguely sensible so perhaps someone else drafting it.

Punting a good idea at the last moment to claim kudos seems trivial in the great scheme of things though.

As noted, the devil is in the implementation detail.

Funding model?

As already mentioned upstream this might be all down to the money and time available to the core developers to look internally at their processes and not just at the agressive targets for the next commercial release.

Like a high security business with massive front office security, turnstiles, finger and retinal printing etc. Which, it turns out, makes it impossible for the developers in the basement working 7 days weeks to meet an arbitrary deadline to get out of hours pizza deliveries. So they modify a back door to the server room so the alarm doesn't sound when the delivery guy calls.

Possible moral is to spend a bit more on your core team even if it makes the performance metrics look worse.

We didn't get hacked because.....is very hard to prove.

No doubt the blame will fall on the developers and not those responsible for not funding internal security.

Noting also that if you are a criminal one of your primary aims is to subvert the police force. Also noting Burgess et al.

Merry whatever

Too busy cooking and eating to check for a new episode.

However I am with the PFY in not wanting to touch home systems.

Unless trying to install the same software on Windows from 2000 to 10 plus Apple variants, chrome books, that interesting ARM device, a netbook running obsolete Linux......is seen as an interesting challenge.

Well, unless the aim is to nuke them all from orbit.

Passive monitoring?

If the software checks for active monitoring software and access to the Internet then presumably passive monitoring at the network boundary would see the traffic.

Getting towards watching the horse bolt out of the stable door, but at least you can watch which way it is going.

Heat sinks should have fins?

Some time after the last cat died (aged 23) I was investigating an overheating problem in our PCs.

Apart from the usual fluff, all the fins of the CPU heat sinks had become smooth with all the gaps between the fins filling up with crud.

I assume it was cat related.

All working again apart from one which may have a flaky PSU.

I'm a bit wary of investigating that for fur, fluff and filth

Eventually self fixing

If the ethnic Japanese continue in this way then the required replacements will eventually be provided by immigration from other cultures

Either there will be a constant flow of young people who are willing to assimilate and not breed or the new young will not accept the conditions which are currently depressing the birth rate.

Either way there will be genetic and cultural drift until the whole thing sorts itself out.

Over population and over work to prop up a society which does not want to breed is eventually self limiting.

Which makes me also wonder if ethnic Japanese who want a work life balance and to raise kids will emigrate to other societies which offer these options, thus making the situation even worse for Japan but possibly better for the diverse human race.

One Per Desk?

Also branded as Tonto for some stupid reason.

Fly more planes?

There are a lot parked up at the moment.

A few points

For those saying effectively "well we colonised America, how hard can it be?" I could point out that America (and Australia for another example) were already populated by humans when the modern invaders arrived.

There were abundant supplies of food and water and plenty of raw materials to build shelters and the climate was agreeable for most of the year.

Survival required little more than basic tools to get started, although you did need some survival knowledge and tool making and agricultural skills would help (remarkably lacking in a lot of early expeditions I read).

Those talking about masses of people moving off Earth. This is not the most fuel efficient way to populate a new planet. Far more efficient to move well engineered production facilities out and replicate humans on site. Ovaries and testes are remarkably compact compared to the finished product and you can screen for (in your view) desirable traits in the producers. Compare this to our planet where the "bangs per buck" made it cost effective to move humans in bulk to provide labour in the colonies. Hence prisoners and slaves.

The poor aren't going to get a look in either. The high cost of shipping humans to orbit and beyond and sustaining them will almost certainly lead to an indentured elite living off Earth under conditions dictated by the financiers who provided the transport and accomodation.

So for the race overall it makes sense to move off planet and spread the risk. For all but a vanishingly small minority it will make no difference. We are stuck on this polluted mud ball and so are our descendants.

The planet will most likely survive in some form whatever hits it. It has so far. Life will also survive, although not as we know it (Jim). Humanity is a fly speck on the timeline of Earth.

Anyway, go Elon. Humanity needs to infect the Universe before this local infestation gets sterilised.

Replace in space?

Would it be more effective (not cheaper) to build the next generation in space?

Might have a better chance of funding because sexy.

Optional Extra?

Nobody so far seems to have mentioned that the instrument to warn the pilot that there were potential issues with the sensor was an optional extra.

Automation?

As far as I can recall there is very little full automation on the UK railways.

Docklands Light Railway is one, and was built from scratch to be driverless.

Everything else seems to have been built in the era of drivers.

Of course the unions might have had some say in this.

IMHO the same applies to road transport.

A main transport network designed for and dedicated to autonomous vehicles would be able to solve most of the thorny issues associated with legacy road networks and interactions with human drivers.

I recall a holiday in the USA when we hired an RV which was huge.

Cruising on the main highways was in general easy as the roads were very wide and not crowded. Easy to automate.

However due to the satnav not knowing how big the vehicle was it took us through SF from the 49ers stadium (good RV park there) to the Golden Gate bridge.

I suspect an autonomous vehicle might have had a nervous breakdown in the traffic.

I relied on the facts that the RV was conspicuously marked as a hire vehicle and was mostly the largest thing around by some margin.

So I don't expect universal vehicle automation any time soon.

Just checking from across the pond

Are these Police Captains fully trained long term professionals, or are they an elected office?

I tend to lose track of which is which.

50% margin?

On a turnover of billions?

The growth may be diminishing but the money tree is awesome.

Shares may be over valued (10% drop is eye watering) but there is still money in tham thar hills.

Port owners?

I thought that multi national port owners sutch as Hutchison Wampoa liked to have the same software in all their ports.

Conflicts with the idea of all ports in one country running the same software.

Allowing Linux Devs to test natively instead of firing up some Windows system might make it worthwhile.

Also, wider testing community.

Preview Pane

Just don't.