Posts by Simon Harris

Re: Can I get....

The trolley problem in theory:

and in practice:

From The Good Place, Series 2, Episode 5.

Re: Yeah although that wasn't a _Video_ game as such

I'd say that what defines a video game is the real time representation of players' characters on a video device that respond to some form of real time control device along with other game features (e.g. balls, aliens, missiles, etc) rather than the exact technology used to render the video image.

I've seen Asteroids rendered both on a vector display and on a raster display - essentially the same game on both in terms of the user experience, but by your reasoning one would not be considered a video game, and the other would. While the rasterising process may be used to detect collisions between sprites when it simultaneously tries to rasterise two or more, collision detection can be done in software (or in the case of the original tennis game with analogue comparators) instead where hardware sprites are not supported.

Maybe every copy of Windows should be sold with a removable media device, and any system updates are locked out of changing anything in the OS until the media device has been plugged in and made an image of the OS partition.

Re: Does nobody ever read Larry Niven?

I thought the idea was to look for life on the moon, not to turn it into a ready-meal.

Re: ... / as a path separator and - as a switch character...

I seem to remember there was a simple hack round about MS-DOS 3.mumble that allowed you to change DOS separators and switches to Unix style ones.

It's too long ago now to remember now whether it was changing the value of a constant flag or changing the arguments of CMP AL, '\' and CMP AL, '/' (or some-such) instructions somewhere in the executable.

Another hack (more a prank than anything useful) was to edit the built-in command table to change one command to the name of a program that a colleague used a lot - the built in command then takes priority in parsing over looking for the executable.

Watching the look of confusion when they were going to have a lunchtime game of LARN and instead get...

c>larn

ECHO is on.

c>

Re: does the landlord refund you all the money you gave to pay the rent? @Jess

I'd say more like 'the new bathroom you started to have fitted'.

You'd expect to enjoy your new bathroom if you stay in the house after it's completed, but lose any rights to it if you move out.

If you have a good relationship with your landlord you might get some sort of recompense for the work you've put in. Good luck if you've spent the last 40 years complaining about the house and how mean he is.

Re: Ironic, isn't it?

"I thought Maplin always had a store in Westcliffe-on-sea in addition to the mail order"

I think the store opened slightly after the mail order business, along with another one just after in Hammersmith.

One of the problems with their mail order business, I think, was that when it started up it would sell to anybody, while companies such as RS and Farnell would only sell to companies with a business account. When RS and Farnell started selling to anyone with a credit card and had a larger and more competitively priced range of components than Maplin, I suspect Maplin couldn't really compete in the mail-order component business any more and the tat content of their shops increased to compensate.

But does Curiosity count its birthdays in Earth years or Mars years?

Re: Obligatory "IT Angle?" Post

The story is in the BootNotes section.

Although it might be more appropriately placed in BootieNotes.

Re: TL;DR

"Only if you work in a tiny specialisted field."

Except that the situation is mirrored across many other fields.

Re: I wouldn't call it 'lazy'

Indeed - to prevent CPU security problems, we should follow in James Newman's footsteps and build our own out of transistors.

http://www.megaprocessor.com/

Still count it as one of the best recoveries ever, but all I got in return was something along the lines of "I suppose I'll have to re-type that [document/spreadsheet/whatever] will I?"

She could at least have made you a hot chocolate.

Re: My next move...

... is to keep using my old phone until it dies.

Re: Slight numerical error.

I remember those days when radio manufacturers would advertise the transistor count like mechanical watch manufacturers would advertise how many 'jewel' bearings the watch had.

Re: The best cable of any kind in 50 years

Depends how many times you run over it with your chair.

Re: Cash on the barrel head

My local kebab shop does very good kebabs and takes both cards and cash.

I always end up paying cash, even if I have my card with me, as the change gives me something to leave in the tips jar.

Re: "1 business day after dispatch"

Unless I know the vendor my heart sinks when I look for something on Amazon and find it's from a Marketplace supplier. I trust them about as much as random people on eBay.

Re: I'm struggling to think of any black androids in film or television

I just had a thought that some of the Battlestar Galactica (remake) Cylons were black and Asian, and looking through their numbers, I see that there were some:

"Simon" - played by Rick Worthy

"Boomer" - played by Grace Park

"Tory Foster" - played by Rekha Sharma

Re: I'm daydreaming ...

... although at 1/6 scale I don't know where you'd find the 1' tall astronauts.

Re: No Excuses! @HKmk23

Except for the possibility of your law abiding citizen becoming reclassified as an undesirable under a future government.

Re: 1980s...

Does anyone else remember the 2532, with its annoyingly subtle different pin-out from the 2732?