Posts by cornetman

Sounds plausible. Thanks for filling in the blanks.

> No, you couldn't, because parts stolen from, for example, a car, aren't then used to repair a device that is then always connected to the internet - and thus potentially a database of stolen parts. For that matter, cars have had windows coded to a particular vehicle for decades.

I'm pretty sure chop-shops are a thing.

And they are illegal.

Re: I cannot imagin the UK having a 10 year limit on roofs.

When we were looking at houses in BC (one of the Southern Gulf Islands actually), one of the houses had cedar shingles. The place itself was dim and damp due to the poor light and encroachment of tree branches. Reaching up, the shingles were squishy and wet. Absolutely horrible in such an environment. Passed by very quickly. It would need a completely new roof.

Re: it "does not know the reasons these blocking orders have been issued."

> personal interpretations of the term "free speech"

I think that most people's reasonable interpretation of that term would be, wherever possible, for people to say and write whatever they want.

Really there are very, very few instances where people should be barred from saying absolutely anything and I think that most of the useful argument is at the fringes of what should be permitted, not the concept itself.

In actual fact, I can think of only two instances of exceptions that I would tolerate curtailment to free speech (only the first am I actually certain about):

1) Lying in a court of law - because a lie there can cause real, physical harm to someone, imposed by the government, or

2) "Speech" reasonably thought to be intended to commit fraud e.g. lying for actual monetary gain (I would include breach of contract in that, since it is a kind of fraud). Note that I'm not *absolutely* certain about this one.

I think that people should be free to hate anyone and anything that they choose.

Re: Mixed bag

> As for trying out a 3A5000, that seems like a bit of a brave decision...

I don't really understand why this is a brace decision. If they are running, for the most part, open source/free software then as long as the regular compilers (GNU etc) support it, then they're good to go. For most situations, what CPU the software is running stopped being an important consideration years ago.

Opting for proprietary software like Windows is the much braver decision if you have other options, considering you are restricted to supported CPUs, chipsets and the like. Witness the kerfuffle with Windows 11 and the onerous restrictions on what it will run on.

> And nobody is going to get behind an open standard that doesn't give them the advantage everyone else implementing the standard

Erm, Vulcan? It was obvious to everyone that multiple diverging standards in the graphics space was hurting everyone.

What you say may be true for AI compute at the moment with there being still rapid development, but I don't think it will be long before the software stack starts to become somewhat commoditised and both developers and manufacturers will want converge on something to avoid the ongoing cost of maintaining it. For NVidia, CUDA is a means to an end and that end is selling hardware. It's only really popular now because it is the only big game in town and people have invested in it.

Once something useful emerges that is cross-platform, people will move to it in droves. Vulcan was like that. It was in the pipeline for quite a while, then once it became mature, everyone important jumped onto it.

Since a patent is in the public record then I guess it is an unpatented trade secret. I think they said as much in the article didn't they?

Not sure why I'm getting downvotes. I'm not especially against the idea of a 4 day work. I just wondered what the guts of the proposed bill are and what effect it would have on existing working arrangements.

Re: 'NIMBYS'

> NIMBYs

Not really sure why this term is being used in this article. From the article *itself* it seems that the problem is not "Not In My Back Yard", and more like "Yes In My Back Yard But Not In A Stupid Way" which I think we can all get behind.

I would go further, the article is actually contradictory:

> The Boeing jet made an emergency landing, and all passengers and crew were unharmed. According to the NTSB's preliminary report [PDF], seven passengers and one flight attendant received minor injuries.

I would say that if you received minor injuries, you most definitely *were* harmed.

Re: I was hoping they'd finally come up with the goods

> I want a button that says "give me a Win7 layout" and it makes all KDE apps conform. No hamburger menus, no CSD, no ribbons, menu bars and freely-movable toolbars everywhere, a cascading Start menu, and I want it in one click.

Yeah, you get it! Give the flexibility to the user, *not* the developer. If the application has to code the application attributes (menus etc) in more abstract ways, then that allows the platform to present that in a number of different ways. It also removes a lot of the design decision burden from the application writer.

Re: Capitals

> We capitalize both Black and White when referring to race, yes. It's our style.

Genuine question: why?

I don't believe that black or white in this context are proper nouns.

I was reminded of something that happened with me the other day on a ferry when the announcements came over the speaker system: "There is no smoking anywhere on the vessel." It got me to thinking, why don't they just say that smoking is prohibited on the vessel?

When I suggested this to my wife, she replied "Well they did say that smoking is not allowed", to which I replied, "Well, actually they didn't. They said that there is no smoking". That's only true until someone actually does smoke, in which case there *would* be smoking on board.

I can guess what actually happened when they were coming up with the script for the announcement, that someone suggested that what they came up with would be less "confrontational" that just saying that smoking is not allowed. It might be less confrontational, but it doesn't actually say what they intended.

Perhaps when people become accustomed to hearing certain forms of speech, they stop thinking about what it actually, logically means. Like "what the VAT paid was on £500". I can envisage an accountants office where this is such common parlance, that the ambiguity of it becomes lost, such that they don't understand when someone points it out. I guess a form of the "curse of knowledge".

Not ragging on the original poster, just an observation....

I don't really understand the snark, although this is El Reg, so I guess I should expect it.

My coworkers are very hard working and dedicated individuals. Working in the evening means exactly that: *working*.

I cannot speak for whatever occurs at your place of employment though. Perhaps that is not the case there.

All I know is that proper, grown up adults can be trusted to work when they say they are. If you work with children, I cannot help that.

Re: It is easy

> What previous commitment?

https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-version-of-windows

"Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10." That was the message from Microsoft employee Jerry Nixon, a developer evangelist speaking at the company's Ignite conference this week.

You're welcome. A quick Google was all that was required. The fact that this was officially supposed to be the "last version of Windows" was *everywhere* at the time. Please stop gaslighting.

> Complaining about a marketing name for a product, however, is just stupid.

Don't really care about the name or the marketing. If Windows 11 is just an incremental evolution of Windows 10, then there seems to be no real justification for the onerous hardware requirements, especially considering that with some simple tricks, it will run perfectly fine on hardware without those requirements. I get it: *really* old hardware can't be supported for ever, but a lot of the hardware that doesn't cut it is pretty decent, recent kit.

This is absolutely correct.

I do often put a teabag into the cup and use the kettle to fill it, but expediency overcomes shame when I'm in a hurry.

Re: "Burnout"

> The reality is that most people have to at least have a side job to make ends meet and absolutely have to grind every single day.

I'm afraid that you are the one in the bubble.

That is complete twaddle.

There are indeed people in that situation. They are very much the minority.

> This is a wrong way. If you give your work for free, corporations wont have incentive to do it themselves and there is no reason for them to employ people to keep legacy devices alive.

Those corporations of which you speak have absolutely no intention of doing what you want. It is not in their interests to serve the public good.

Your worship of the corporation is quite frankly baffling. They have no conscience of the poor or of the lower classes in society. They are not even on their radar.

They will offer them neither employment nor aid. You are the embodiment of everything that is wrong in American society: naked corporatism, which is capitalism without conscience. There is clearly nothing that I can say that will reach your humanity.

Re: As for the fascist greenshirts...

> A wood burner is, perhaps, not as green as you think: Medical Xpress - ACT deaths (more than from RTAs).

Well, the number of RTAs is a known number. The number that they present in the paper is an "estimate".

In reality they have no idea.

Yes, they're not so great for the air quality. I will admit that, although I commented that is was renewable not healthy.

In the paper they mention that it generates CO2 etc, but in a renewable system that shouldn't be an issue, which they do not mention. The surrounding trees suck it back up again.