Posts by Chris Miller

@Mephistro

You must accept (because the mathematics is watertight and getting on for a century old) that there are fundamental limits to what a computer (Turing machine) can do. If the human mind is capable of such things, then it can't be simulated on a computer, no matter how powerful and how clever the programmer. It might (pure speculation) be possible to emulate the mind on a quantum computer, which is not subject to the same limitations.

Penrose has explicitly said that he is not claiming that there must be something non-physical about human consciousness. He accepts that it may one day be possible to emulate the human mind with a machine - but it is not possible to do it with a Turing machine, something more powerful would be needed.

Re: VDI is not the panacea you might think it is

I'll add Industrial Plant simulation to my list of topics unsuitable for VDI. But, I repeat, most people aren't working on CAM, they need only a few basic apps that are easily capable of being handled through VDI.

Spoiler alert

You do understand that Steve Bong isn't real? (Although the moment when he becomes real is getting scarily close).

Re: When can we see the apologies?

And perhaps we should ban all speculation until the NTSB publish their report - but that's against human nature. I think you're using hindsight. I've no experience of air accident investigation, but if one of my computers goes TU, the first question that occurs to me is "what have we just changed?" In this case, no-one has disputed that this was the first flight using a new propellant in a rocket motor that has had a number of issues (as have most such systems). I'm glad this now appears not to have been the cause, since fixing a mechanical failure ought to be possible more quickly than replacing the propulsion system.

Re: Vultures circling

Tom Bower has a track record as an investigative journalist and has spent years exposing the more 'interesting' aspects of Branson's enterprises. I'm sure he doesn't have or claim any special expertise in the area of rocketry, but he can certainly get access to people who have.

Re: Value for money?

I was afraid that would bring the Mac zealots out frothing and screaming :)

Yes, I get that 5 is a bigger number than 4. (Which part of "superior [...] for some purposes, at least" are you having difficulty understanding?) No, I don't think that makes it "value for money" (as the author claims) to pay 5x as much, particularly if the difference is barely detectable by the human eye. YMMV.

And (of course) Windows (since at least v3) allows you to scale the font - which is precisely what I said, doh!

Transport costs

The biggest (and rather undersung) revolution in the last 50 years of doing stuff by manipulating atoms rather than bits, has been the plummeting cost of bulk transport. You might be amazed (though you really shouldn't be, if you think about it) at the actual cost of shipping a container full of (say) plastic ducks from China to Europe. This also applies to bulk transport of heavier and less costly commodities such as coal - which is essentially why there are no deep mines left in Western Europe (assuming you don't count Poland).

A lot of people at the time thought Marx had found the answer. Today we've had experience of various attempts to implement his ideas - all have ended badly, most of them catastrophically badly. So anyone who still thinks Marxism is the answer hasn't really grasped the question.

And just because some famous people were criticised initially and later proved to be correct doesn't mean that anyone who is criticised today must be right - most of them won't be, and are simply being criticised because they're spouting rubbish. As Carl Sagan put it:

The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton*, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

* Robert Fulton - designer of the first practical steamboat and submarine

Re: My vote...

gTLDs can be explained in two words: Free Money.

Which reminds me

There once was a man from Austrahlia

But the odour, alas, was a fahlia.

I'm not sure this is quite the same thing. Amadeus and Sabre are (at heart) multi-airline reservation systems (I think Sabre started life as the American Airlines booking system). It makes sense for airlines to use them for this and related purposes rather than develop their own versions in house and then have to interface with them. While Amadeus and Sabre themselves are fundamentally software houses, and could reasonably choose to outsource the running of their 24x7 systems to a larger global player like HP.

Outsourcing large parts of your global IT systems, as Lufthansa would appear to be doing, is a much bigger step (braver, in the 'Yes Minister' sense).

Allegedly

Some third party apps misidentified a windows version beginning with a 9 as Windows 95 or 98. So calling it Windows 9 broke stuff.

Re: They truly think we're all idiots

I think paedophile is rapidly replacing Nazi for the purposes of Godwin's Law.

Re: No propulsion?

I'm not sure how you'd stop the sail interacting with the solar wind. In most of the inner solar system, it dominates the effect of sunlight.

Re: Apple Q&A

Surely that should be Och iPad (pat. pending).

Re: Time

I don't think they're planning to sell it for $150, rather that's the cost to purchase the necessary materials to make your own.

@frank ly

Probably a barista.

Re: What were the criteria for model selection???

It looks like they had a price range of £350-400 - the TS-451 is some way beyond that.

Re: Drebin?

Just to be picky, that's from Airplane! not The Naked Gun, try:

Mayor: Drebin, I don't want any more trouble like you had last year on the southside. Understand? That's my policy.

Frank: Yes. Well, when I see 5 weirdos dressed in togas stabbing a guy in the middle of the park in full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards. That's my policy.

Mayor: That was a Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar, you moron! You killed 5 actors! Good ones!

Re: A pedant writes ...

Thanks Tim. I thought 1% sounded a bit low, though 10% sounds a bit high to me. Perhaps I don't move in the right circles, or maybe it's 10% of heterosexual men have visited a prostitute at least once. But 1 in 10 men regularly use prostitutes?