Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: Cruel parents

Could have been worse, He could have been in the pathologist's office.

Re: Full names please.......

"still we failed to notice that one of them ended up with the initials of a Personal Digital Assistant"

Although her forenames are unexceptional we should have spotted the significance of her initials. I think it caused a bit of an issue when a post-grad student was already a DR.

Re: Four......

I'm sure if you search news reports hard enough you'll find reports from c 1980 of a police investigation which involved digging a trench near the practice tee of a Co. Down golf course (Crawfordsburn IIRC). It will include mention of police taking away samples in white plastic bags. In fact nothing of significance was found (it was one of several reports alleging buried bodies, all false) but it was like a golf ball mine. A lot of police officers were keen golfers and the bags were clear plastic, full of golf balls.

Back in those days the golf club restaurant served such delicacies as chicken in a basket....

Re: AWS?

This is BT. Please don't assume that because it has competency in some levels that that implies competency in top management.

Re: Supercharge BT and drive its return to growth

To say nothing of the fact that they decided they didn't need to be in the mobile market. The regulated bit always irked them. That's why they made disastrous investments in things they didn't understand because they thought there were fat profits in unregulated ventures.

Re: Customer support

At some point either the advertising budget runs out or manglement starts to take a look at what they get for their money. I suspect that right now there's an advertising bubble as the entire consumer side of the internet seems to depend on it and that it's going to get very messy when it bursts.

Re: It could have been worse...

This has been explained a number of times but try this exercise.

Look at the things you own. Include any investments, pension rights etc. How much money would they be worth if you sold them? (For this purpose just take the present valuation less the outstanding amount of any loans taken to buy them.) That, plus any money you have in the bank or your pocket, is what you are worth in the way in which these personal valuations are made.

How much of that could you actually spend? Only the money in your bank and your pocket; this is what's known as liquid assets. You probably wouldn't even want to spend that much on a single purchase. If you wanted to buy something big you'd have to sell some of the other stuff or borrow against its value and possibly get some of your mates to chip in if it's something that they might want to share.

Re: End of the Polymeriferous Period

The enzyme evolved in bacteria in the wild, presumably in temperatures <30C, so forget about the risk of escape. For an industrial process the less the energy input the better so as low an optimum the better. It may well be, of course, that although the wild-type optimum may well be higher although it can work at ambient temperatures.

Re: End of the Polymeriferous Period

According to the summary this enzyme breaks it down to monomers. Presumably in vivo there are other enzymes to convert the monomers into something the existing bacterial enzymes can use.

Re: alchohol?

Make that alchohohol for Christmas.

Re: End of the Polymeriferous Period

TFA says "low temperature" with the implication that 30 Celsius is low. It's probably not as low as the wild-type bacteria were experiencing. Something doesn't quite hang together here. Were they planning to extract the enzyme to use on its own from the bacteria and discovered that it doesn't work as well as it does in vivo? I can see the attraction of using purified enzyme: it will leave the product of the breakdown to become a potentially useful industrial substrate instead of letting the bacteria respire it all the way to CO2.

But why AI? What's wrong with the traditional approach of seeding a substrate with a weak suspension, incubating and selecting the colonies that grow best? Not eye-catching enough?

Re: Not surprised

Not if he has to pay for the electricity.

Re: I for one love this idea

The correct solution to this is not have the OS break it.

Re: I for one love this idea

"If something still works and is not a security risk then it doesn't need fixing"

I'd go a step further. It needs not fixing.

Re: "They work"

A thumb down. I think we've found a UX designer.

Re: "They work"

"What kind of updates it needs?"

It probably doesn't look like this year's idea of "modern".

Re: Access is not the problem

That's the problem.

Re: Alarming, fired.

The Civil Servants almost certainly know it. Civil Servants follow policies laid down for them. Who do you think makes the policies? The clue's in the name - and they certainly don't know it.

Re: Alarming, fired.

Some FOSS organisations do monetise support. But that was only one half of the OP. The other was support being a cost for closed source. It's not if they monetise support. That's why as a system manager I had support contracts with HP & Informix and why, when I was freelance at some of my clients had support contracts with their vendors.

Re: Alarming, fired.

It depends entirely on whether you choose to monetise support.

Re: Very interesting...

"Suspect = as yet unpunished perpetrator"

Yup, that's one that really gets my goat. "Culprit" is the word for whoever dunnit. Sloppy use of language leads to sloppy thinking - or perhaps is the consequence of it. I'm not sure it was used as much back then. Perhaps it's become more common as a result of more sloppily thought out TV crime series. Or sloppy thinking journalists.

Re: You'd have thought that pros would do it better...

So the UPS really was up the wazoo.

Re: Designed to fail

We had the building UPS taken out by a lightning bolt. The rest of the building was OK & it took ages to get the UPS fixed during which time we ranthe servers on the uninterrupted interruptible power supply.

Re: The security system

A tip to the local fire service that an inspection might be a good idea should have fixed that.

"perfectly functional for other tasks in "O" mode"

It made an excellent door stop.