Posts by allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Artificial Insanity

An AI-based 'Son of Clippy' roaming free in an 'Internet of Things' - the horror...

"I was going to suggest that they could be trained for land mine clearing. If anyone knows what the pay is I might be interested. No promises -besides, how do I find out if it's even possible."

Well, if I remember my army training re landmines correctly, there is a way to find out - but you're NOT going to like it.

Re: Don't blame users for the UI

The two boxes I have to use at my place of gainful employment still run XP. And Office 2003. Any questions?

Idea for next pub quiz: "PR guys with names that look like typos"

Anyone remember Jerry terHorst?

Re: Cock Lane?

Heh, "Surrey"... *giggle*

"the only thing required to upgrade an iPad or iPod is a big hammer"

Obviously not, that would bork it. You must use the iHammer (you know, the one with the rounded edges). If we can agree on the terms you can borrow mine.

Re: Yikes

<sarcasm> Are you really insinuating that getting rid of experienced staff that knew how to make stuff that actually worked (but somehow were under the delusion that their abilities made them eligible to receive decent wages) and replacing them with inexperienced guys that have no idea of what they actually are supposed to make and how to do it (but are dirt cheap) could possibly result in piss poor performance? Surely not. Every consultancy will disprove you right away. </sarcasm>

How about mauve?

Re: "158 of which are Category 1" / severe illness / helmet

That helmet will be (much?) bigger* and heavier than a conventional helmet. Think "headbanging with an extra, say, 5 kg strapped to your skull" - doesn't sound that healthy. My motorcycle helmet weighs in at 1,350 g (according to the data sheet), and it's just a helmet without any extra gear. Formula 1 drivers have to do weight lifting exercises to strengthen their neck muscles. I don't know how many Gs you pull going through a hairpin at 200 km/h in a race car - certainly less than in a jet fighter. So that's a heavy strain on the neck even during, well, just flying around.

And if you have to eject: I am given to understand that ejecting at high velocities is best avoided anyway - the air will hit you like a brick wall. Even without having parts of your body caught between the seat and the canopy and crushed, unpleasant at best. Now try this with a heavy helmet - you'll be lucky to walk away from that with just whiplash.

*The displays will have to be mounted at some distance from the eyes, meaning real leverage for their weight. Call it 30 cm (horizontal) from display's centre of gravity to base of skull, 1,000 g for the display = ca. 3 Nm+* just to hold the thing while standing still on the runway.

^{**Yes, I know. 9.81 m/s/s and all that. This is engineering, not physics. The square root of 50 is 7. Because 7*7=49, and 49 is basically 50, sort of. Yes, all the buildings I did the structural engineering for are still standing. Run along now and work on that fusion thing, there's a good chap.}

- "What we need is production databases that require 2FA or 2 user auth to run DELETE and DROP commands :p"

- "Or possibly Sysadmins who stop and check, and then check again, before deleting anything, ever."

True. But you'll have to admit it - a sleek console with a two-key-thingy like in a missile silo would be totally cool.

Re: Chip? Heathens!

Had some Braun HiFi gear once and a big Phillips reel-to-reel... today anything that gets past my tinnitus without too much distortion is fine. Still playing lots of vinyl and tapes, though...

Anyway, off topic, technically...

Re: There are many ways to crack this nut

"Phones made of C4?"

Ironically (or maybe not) you could outsource that to israeli specialists too:

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/06/world/palestinian-believed-to-be-bombing-mastermind-is-killed.html

"That is unless you want to write those pages by hand."

Well, good penmanship takes a lot of practice. However, I'd print the info (and make sure the pages are properly shredded when they are no longer needed).

Re: @ac confusion

Confusion? Or a bit of Tuxbaiting, perhaps?

Re: Microservices -Luxury

Pah, in my day it was femtoservices, and we had to do them ourselves!

Re: Relief

Me too - really woke me up, that one!

BTW, will there be a new installment on Good Friday, or shall we have to live through the easter festitivities without intellectual sustenance and moral guidance by the great Aleister Dabbs who must be hailed by all?

Re: Is it only governments and military

I did some cybering in the mid-to-late 1980ies on a CDC Cyber, I forget the model. Using Fortran77, waiting for Fortran88 to be released soon... talk about a combo-breaker...

Re: Scope creep

Not just government IT projects, and for that matter, not just IT projects...

It usually helps if the first step is you helping the client to figure out what they actually want. They think they do, but in most cases they are wrong.

In my experience, a 'you are ordering a new car, what do you want to do with it and what features should it have' analogy works pretty good. Or the 'you are booking a holiday trip' analogy. These are concepts (nearly) everybody can grasp and has experienced already. Also, IME most people actually do spend more time, care and thought on buying cars and booking holidays than they spend on buying real estate, finding spouses, choosing doctors or lawyers, etc.