Posts by Neil Barnes

Re: 30% error rate!

As long as it's generating false positives, which obviously can be taxed because computer says yes!, and not false negatives, where it might miss something that can be taxed, oh no!, then that's a success.

Apparently.

Re: Meh

Well, there's always 'Wisden'...

Re: Exceptions for such dual-purpose signs have been arranged.

I mean, does the price of the gas change while that delivery truck is in transit?

You're making the mistake of assuming that the 'free market' reduces prices to a minimum courtesy of competition. That is of course what the proponents thereof would like you to believe, but, in observed fact it actually *raises* prices to some figure technically known as 'all the market will bear'...

I think I may have posted this recently, but in (at least this bit of) Germany, fuel stations are required to inform an official body within five minutes of changing their pump prices, and that body makes the prices available to e.g. web clients on grounds of transparency.

https://ich-tanke.de/tankstellen/super-e10/umkreis/14469-potsdam/

Re: Python--

That's ok as long as he's laughing in a 'pythonic' way...

The IQ of the internet is that of its dimmest user, divided by the number of users.

Re: Excellent news

Are you here for the five minute argument, or the full half hour?

And yet, unless one spends weeks poring over CPU specs, there's very little clue about the relative speeds for a generic workload on, say, a laptop system. These days I tend to settle for 'laptops aimed at managers are always faster than they need to be' and the approach seems to work for my admittedly low expectations.

Re: Also

But isn't it a trade between functionality and simplicity always? Having had to 'work' with thousand page documents with hundreds of random styles added apparently at random a text/word processor that effectively requires the use of textual metadata styles is a delight.

Though its obvious that as the end result of LyX is print ready output - and to be fair, it can get to be hard work if you need to include detailed tables - then it's not the 'text with bold and italics' which I agree is a halfway house rarely encountered.

The hover text on that XKCD is worth noting, too...

Re: Cold weather report from Hell

Yes: how many times? The first amendment prevents the government from interfering with your right to speak/publish/etc. A private company is not the government...

Re: Incredibly delicate technology

Black brown red orange yellow green blue violet grey white? The problem I've always found is that the mnemonic is no easier to remember than the represented values... with the possible exception of Richard of York gave battle in vain, which was drummed into me at a very early age.

To be fair colour coding has kinda dropped out of use with SM components.

Re: A question of responsibilities?

That would seem logical; if specialist tools and skills are required it's probably unreasonable to expect Joe Public to have them. But it might be that the warranty transfers to the repairer?

And we also forget that his captain, Robert Fitzroy, basically wanted a suitable companion along to keep him sane, and selected Darwin. And in later life, invented the weather forecast.

That's right, you spin up the gas turbines.

Which, courtesy of the solar and wind energy the rest of the time, aren't used for a fraction of the time they otherwise would be.

This is not an either-or game; it's a question of maximising resources.

Re: UX Designer?

My mother's house in Scotland had the address '1/2 [name of village]', and an Inverness post code. Inverness is a three hour drive away.

Meanwhile in this village near Berlin (the original), some but not all the houses on the main street carry two numbers, apparently as a result of some historical renumbering exercise. The offset between the old and new numbers is not constant, and some carry only one number. I guess the postman knows where Frau Schmidt lives.

Re: Microtransactions?

They seem to get on their phones pretty quickly on the autobahn... there doesn't seem to be a concept of slowing early for traffic in front, just charging up at 250kph and slamming the anchors on because the car in the outside lane has the temerity to be passing someone at a mere 150kph.

I do wonder how many brakes, discs, and tyres these drivers get through. Perhaps they're on a subscription service too?

I've bounced off similar, but I think it's petty control rules sometimes: buying a round of pizza and beer for an office at the end of a complex move where they all chipped in above and beyond... no great amount, but nooo, there isn't a category for that. Or another occasion where I needed a flight at short notice, and I noticed a special offer where going business class would save a hundred quid or so. So I did. And ended up on the carpet because business class travel requires exec level authorisation (even though the cost came out of already agreed budget on a project I was managing...)

My experience over the years was that the projects that cost millions were barely discussed, and the few hundred quid projects were waved through, but if the budget was about the cost of a house... oh boy, then there was discussion. Obviously that was a number people understood viscerally.

Re: Here's an idea -

Older than that, I fear: Fiat used ECUs from the mid-eighties and I'm the other big names did too, just to meet pollution requirements.

Electric windows are an interesting one: there has to be some mechanism that stops the window when Junior sticks his head in it and presses the button. Though one could think of it as evolution in action...