* Posts by Will Godfrey

5893 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Sep 2007

BT in tests to beam down 5G coverage from the stratosphere

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Never mind commercial viability...

What about the environment?

What effect will this have on wildlife - in particular, birds?

How are the aircraft fueled and powered?

What ground support systems will need to be maintained?

If this is some form of glorified repeater, what kind of base station would be needed?

Shag pile PC earned techies a carpeting from HR

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Two I remember from way back (as a trainee)

The guy responsible for us, Brian, had a big blue spotted mug - this was in the days when we had a tea lady - and when he had a day off, one of the other trainees got hold of his mug put about an inch of water in the bottom, then ran freshly mixed silicon rubber compound over it. This was shiny white, almost perfectly matching the colour of the mug. Once completely set he made two tiny holes in it, turned it upside down, and trickled compressed air into one hole, forcing the water out of the other. That done he sealed the holes with another couple of dobs of silicon rubber.

The following day we all managed to be in sight as the the poor instructor had his mug filled by the tea lady. We didn't have long to wait, as the heated air expanded and tea started flowing over the top of the mug - much to the instructors astonishment. Finally the silicon rubber ruptured and there was a mini tea volcano, to the merriment of all.

Much later the guy's mug was accidentally dropped and broke (concrete floor) and the same trainee very carefully put it back together with water soluble adhesive. So this time the instructor suddenly found himself holding just the handle with a bit of the mug, and a desk awash with tea.

Actually we bought him a new mug afterwards for being such a good sport.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Good point. Might just be a shag-e dog story

Intel inside a world of pain as revenue plunges by a third

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Re: Slash spending and layoff employees

I wish I could! I used to do an enormous amount of reading in my early 20s and am pretty sure it was around that time. I can mentally 'see' a thick large format publication but not which one it was :(

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Re: Slash spending and layoff employees

As an aside, many years ago I read that a study had determined people were at their most intelligent when a little hungry and a bit cold.

FOSS could be an unintended victim of EU crusade to make software more secure

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

E for Effort

I'm reminded of a TV series many moons ago 'misleading cases'. On one occasion it revolved around an individual being hit by a company's blanket policy. In the judges summing up he says "Blanket policies are applied to blankets. This is not a blanket - case dismissed".

I can see, and agree with what the overall objective is, but this needs a lot more thought.

P.S

I also have a (very small) dog in this fight. I'm one of a very small team developing a FLOSS soft-synth.

So you want to replace workers with AI? Watch out for retraining fees, they're a killer

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Meh

Meh

Recently I heard a number of "compositions" of music of various styles generated by AI. Technically interesting, but utterly lifeless - so an accurate representation in a way.

After less than half a year, Intel quietly kills RISC-V dev environment

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Hit Squad?

So who want's Intel dead?

You there, boffins and tech giants, take this $50m and figure out better chips

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Re: A pretty good way to choke real innovation

Steam engines and motor cars weren't designed by people instructed by government to find a better means than horse and cart.

Nobody told the Wright brothers to design a plane.

Transistors weren't invented by people being instructed to make an alternative to Valves.

ICs weren't developed because the authorities considered discrete components too cumbersome.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

A pretty good way to choke real innovation

Tell the designers what they must design, without any understanding of what they are demanding - even if it's impossible.

Three seconds of audio could end up costing Fox $500,000

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

FWIW...

I still get a brief chill at the sound of a WW2 air raid siren - even though I'm not old enough to have heard them during the blitz - probably from seeing the behaviour of my mother and grandmother when they were still being tested.

US ban on China chip exports rebounds, causes 2,700 job losses

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

I'm trying to look surprised

... as you can see.

it's a bit like launching rockets. Every action creates an equal and opposite reaction?

Then again, we don't have politicians launching rockets.

Truck-size asteroid makes one of the tightest fly-bys of Earth ever recorded

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Alien

Zork to Yegolf

Damn. I nearly got it that time. Your turn to try for the blue one.

BOFH and the case of the Zoom call that never was

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

I consider myself fortunate

I've never had to deal with those kinds of numpties. However, I had to deal with more 'low level' numpties that were sometimes more creative!

Go to security school, GoTo – theft of encryption keys shows you need it

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Angel

Somebody else's computer

... and now some more somebodies computers - well at least the removes the risk of a single point of failure.

Space dust reveals Earth-killer asteroids tough to destroy

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Litter Bugs

Those damn Vogons, just fly-tipping again!

EU infrastructure risk project to address potential climate, 'resource' shortage catastrophes

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Coat

Oh here we go again.

Let's all make fun of the EU. I don't see anyone extolling the virtues of any other group by comparison. Come to that, it rather sounds like whistling in the dark.

Coat because I had the chance to move to Germainy some years back and turned it down :(

Chinese mobe-makers play a long game with homebrew chips

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Don't underestimate the Chinese

They have a very long history of playing a waiting game, and while there's a lot I don't like about their culture, there's a lot that commands respect.

US authorities release asylum seekers after leaking their data online

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Facepalm

Honour among thieves?

See title

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Re: Metric for precision. Imperial for sharing

Try that when dividing a cake between a small number of people - which is exactly the sort of thing number systems were invented for in the first place. 5 really is the only outlier, and much larger angles would be too hard to 'see' anyway.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Boffin

Re: I just use SI most of the time

A lot of railway distance/length measurements in the UK are still done in chains

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: The French also tried metric time

I saw what your did there!

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Angel

Metric for precision. Imperial for sharing

That's my view.

The great value of 12 is that it readily splits by 2,3,4,6.

Then again I sometime like to use imperial just to blow the mind of some precocious twat who trying to lord it over everyone.

If we have self-healing bio robots in 2053, it started here with mouse muscle cyborgs

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Spooky!

But I don't think we need to worry about them..... yet

Microsoft is checking everyone's bags for unsupported Office installs

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Linux

Not something I need to worry about.

See Icon ->

Oh, and I don't even have WINE installed.

Laser-wielding boffins bend lightning to their will

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Boffin

Just a thought

I wonder if ths could be a route to harvesting lightning energy - although I've no idea what could store such huge amounts in such a short time.

Bringing the first native OS for Arm back from the brink

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Re: 64-bit port

Most of the software is written in C these days, and RO has GCC.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Thumb Up

Thanks for this.

I still look fondly on RISC OS, and indeed am considering going to the Southwest Show (25 Feb.) to see how it's getting on.

The Archimedes was the first (probably only) computer I really got to understand at all levels, even down to writing some ARM code that could handle 128 large completely independent sprites with full collision detection - using BBC BASIC's in-line assembler.

Unix is dead. Long live Unix!

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Re: Are you ok?

Indeed!

Right from the start, Linus Torvalds was at great pains to make it clear that Linux was not Unix, but embraced Unix-like concepts.

Flaming USB battery halts flight from Taiwan to Singapore

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: And this is why Teslas and possibly other EVs ..

Eurotunnel is no stranger to fires - all of which have been caused by lorries. A friend and I had booked a train for the day after the 2014 one to join a one-off meetup with fellow musicians from across Europe to play at a private session in France. There was no way to book alternative arrangements in time.

Haiku beta 4: BeOS rebuild / almost ready for release / A thing of beauty

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Thumb Up

Really good news!

I've been watching this with interest since I first heard about it. Looks like I'll have to find time to give it a spin. I've an eeePC901 hanging around as well as an old dual core Athon machine. I'm also hoping it can be ported to the Raspberry Pi - that would make a dramatic improvement!

I spy with my little Pi: Upgraded cameras for single board computer

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Exactly my first thought!

Virgin Orbit doesn't

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Unhappy

Oh Well

Just another data point in our accelerating downward spiral.

Uncle Sam OKs vaccine that protects honeybees against hive-destroying bacterium

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Cancer, T-Cells, mRNA

That's strange. Over the last few years I've had 4 COVID jabs along with my normal annual FLU jabs - no sign of any 'nuclear bomb' yet. When should I expect this event to take place. I'm already in my seventies, so obviously can't wait much more than another twenty years or so.

CES Worst in Show slams gummi gouging, money-wasting mugs, and other dubious kit

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Pint

Have one of these as well as an upvote

Rust projects open to denial of service thanks to Hyper mistakes

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: So Rust is not memory safe then

As the French would say:

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Techies try to bypass damaged UPS, send 380V into air traffic system

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

No Excuses

If you know there's three phase around you should always check with a suitable test meter. If you 'know' there isn't you should still check in case some numpty has been messing around. Also, especially check neutral continuity. The most lethal situation is a broken neutral that's just hanging there looking innocent because there's a star connected motor on it.

Computing's big question for 2023: How many more questions can we endure?

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Pint

Re: A depressing list

Nuse! Nurse!

he used the word "Edge"

Meet the merry pranksters who keep the workplace interesting, if not productive

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Pranking is abuse

You my be surprised to know, that laughter is sometimes an indicator of extreme stress. The first time I saw that was when some kids were horsing around in the sports changing room slamming doors on the other kids... until one of the kids lost a finger - the kid went totally hysterical.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

The best 'mosquito'

This was in one of the electronics mags (can't remember which) and had both a timer and a light sensor, so it was only active for fairly short periods, and also only when the light was below a certain level.

In praise of MIDI, tech's hidden gift to humanity

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Re: MIDI FTW

That's actually in ther MIDI spec to reduce congestion, if you send to commands of the same type, a properly implemented MIDI out will use running status, and a simpler message is sent.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Re: works mostly...

Seems you found yourself a nice holiday project. Oh, and if you like tinkering, a Teensy V4 has everything you need to make a multi-port MIDI I/O to USB unit... including the driver software.

BOFH and the office security access upgrade

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Re: Question

Many moons ago on the Acorn Archimedes someone wrote a program simply call cockroach. When you ran it nothing happened ... until you closed or moved a window, at which point you'd see a handful of cockroaches scurrying to hide behind the nearest window.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

So Simon once worked at one of my old employers!

We had job cards that were supposed to be filled in at the end of the day, but as we were building quite complex A/V racks each job would last several weeks, and as the cards were only collected monthly, we just quickly filled them in just before they were wanted.

Until... HR decided they wanted more detail and had this computer system installed that demanded entry of every start and stop before you left at the end of the day. It was the most clunky and user unfriendly thing any of us have ever seen. This went of for a couple of months, then suddenly we reverted to the cards again with no explanation. We found out later that one of the most senior engineers, put in a massive overtime claim for the time spent filling the thing in.

Tesla driver blames full-self-driving software for eight-car Thanksgiving Day pile up

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Meh

Re: FSD ≠ Autonomous

However, on my Skoda Fabia cancelling sudden braking isn't possible - unless you go through a complex menu system to disable it... every time you start the car.

Where it is most likely to happen is where a car in a right hand lane is about to turn and just touches the brakes at the point of turning, and even if stopping dead I would still just pass it on the left.

On two occasions I was nearly rear-ended, and received much honking, gesticulating and swearing.

It's time to retire 'edge' from our IT vocabulary

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: List of marketing terms designed to segment the market and boost sales

Are you me? You sound write like me!

Why would a keyboard pack a GPU and run Unreal Engine? To show animations beneath the clear keys, natch

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Coat

Proof (if needed)

that some people have far more money than sense.

Coat, 'cos I'm outa here.

Apple accused of censoring apps in Hong Kong and Russia to maintain market access

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

It's the American way

So no surprise that the world expert in gouging, restrictive and shady practices would do whatever increases their profits.

/s

UK's Guardian newspaper breaks news of ransomware attack on itself

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Re: Likely culprit

I think you'll find there's a laundry list of organisations and individuals that would like to see it gone.