Posts by Doug Bostrom
98 posts • joined Thursday 3rd July 2008 21:07 GMT
Shrinkage
The circle of illumination shed by these articles continues to diminish. I suppose it's inevitable; if Lewis is to retain any slight resemblance to coherency then he's doomed always to ignore more.
Jennifer Francis et al, much?
What about incidental data?
Presumably if satellites incidentally collects data that might be used for climate research they too will be for the chopping block? Do these morons understand the overlap in data collection? Why do I bother asking?
Stasis guaranteed
Whipsawing NASA on an annual basis will ensure that we go exactly nowhere.
Will our memory be long enough?
In 3-4 years we'll have no polar orbiting weather satellites and our forecasting ability will be thrown back to the 1960s era because of absurd stunts such as "sequestration." There are loads of other time-delayed disasters being planted today by our ideological romantics, mostly noticeable only later. Will anybody remember to connect the dots?
"We couldn't afford new satellites" won't sound very convincing, if folks ask why we no longer can predict whether a hurricane will make landfall or not. But will we remember that we used to have that ability?
Microsoft: Innovator of Problems
Microsoft's main development vector still seems to hinge on making sure that user data is securely locked into their "experience ecosystem" or whatever they're calling their magic spectacles these days.
It's possible that customers will eventually figure out that when Microsoft says "the other guy's software won't read your data," they really mean "we scrambled your data and you paid us for it, suckers."
SSL certificate renewal automated=mature?
Posted in Boeing outlines fix for 787 batteries
Re: Hindenberg
Years ago I was the lucky person with our firm who took the (Christmas week) phone call announcing that a device which we'd just installed had exploded and reduced itself to small fragments and a cloud of black smoke in a shopping mall in the NE US, prompting an evacuation and demand that we immediately remove the approximately 1,800 other copies deployed around the mall's local community (this was in 2001 and in general emergency responders were quite jumpy, to say the least).
Reversing this setback was quite an education. Although their battery had exploded for a reason that was never satisfactorily explained, luckily our vendor (a very large French battery firm) appeared well-versed in the art of euphemisms as they apply to badly behaving batteries. We were instructed to never use the words "explode" or "detonate" or "burst" in the technical reports demanded of us by regulatory authorities; the proper words to use were "spontaneous disassembly."
And lo, the magic words worked. We never removed a single device. :-)
Nice to see that Lewis has finally given up on understanding the sciency part of climate change.
I suspect that prior to 1950 few would have rated wearing seat belts among the things they could do to improve their safety while riding in automobiles. Happily we're not solidly rooted in ignorance.
Posted in Microsoft brings Azure back online
A day passes, and then another year
"We will continue monitoring the health of the Storage service and SSL traffic for the next 24 hours..."
...and then we will ignore the situation for 364 days, until our cert once again expires.
Only for 24 hours? Surely not, but surely they'd also be a little more careful in their phrasing, one would think.
Re: I'd look at the Battery Power Conditioning Circuits
Individual cell-reversal will cause destructive failure as well. Possible a cell died, began trying to conduct "backwards?"
" Initial tests at a facility in Arizona show no problems, while Japanese investigators report that their APU circuit boards are too badly burnt to provide meaningful data at this time."
Hopefully the entire facility will not burn to the ground --again-- when testing becomes spontaneously and spectacularly exothermic, as happened earlier in the 787 program. That would slow down the investigation.
Rawls surely could have done better than getting it backwards?
http://skepticalscience.com/ipcc-draft-leak-global-warming-not-solar.html
Needs coffin nails and nothing to hand but a bag of hammers. Tsk.
Re: I just bought a Windows phone
Not called "the Borg" for nothing.
Re: Fewer apps == fewer crap apps
It's too hard; how do I tap and swipe that? Or can I just pinch it? I've forgotten how to use 3 out of 5 fingers. Plus I'm having difficulty writing this with only an index finger; isn't there some useful way to use all these extra digits draping from my hand?
Also can somebody help me open my jar of jam?
So it's kind of like a recession, or depression: by tacit consensus to remain enslaved to notions of economics that have lost their roots in the physical world we all agree to be miserable. It's a sad day when the physics hand we're dealt has nothing to do with our quality of life.
Re: Dinosaurs
And if Faber-Castell decides your pencil will henceforth be in the shape of a pretzel, be a Marine, suck it up, go with the flow. By all means, don't look for another pencil vendor.
Great story, well researched, engagingly written. "Where are they today" bit was also intriguing. Thanks!
Wouldn't it be even more intelligent and savvy not to locate data centers in places where it becomes very warm for many weeks of the year? Let alone NC, how about the weird fascination of Las Vegas and other places in the SW US for operators of data centers?
What about right next door to HydroQuebec's dams in northern Canada? Rail leads to the rest of the world, meaning fiber connection is a snap. Granted the operators would have to be pretty strange people but how is that any different than somebody locking themselves in windowless fortress in Las Vegas, really?
More useless noise.
Late to the party, as usual, bringing nothing but friction and unnecessary expense. Look for just enough success in the market to make a pointless mess for customers, like Silverlight.
"But the really cool thing about all of this is that Microsoft is 90,000 people or so, so the fact that we're all behind this and we're all pushing down these design principles is something that's tremendously exciting."
Pretty much sums up everything wrong with the picture. Spend more time outside of the campus and don't waste those precious moments at hermetic MS events; perhaps this disastrous self-hypnosis wouldn't happen so often.
Taxes!=science. It's helpful to keep them separate in your mind.
Posted in Microsoft offers workarounds for IE bug
Everything is an Experience at Microsoft
"Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET)." AKA "EMETic"
At Microsoft, you do not use the toilet, you have a "Metabolic Experience." If you have dysentery, you have a "Enhanced Metabolic Experience."
When you and your spouse get that special spark of an evening, you have a "Conjugal Experience." If it's extra-marital and stolen in the back seat of the car, it's an "Enhanced Interoperability Experience."
When you're being retained as CEO after a dismal job performance, you're having an "Enhanced Retention Experience."
More information
See here:
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/08/more-news-on-cryosat-2.html
"1) The numbers are PROVISIONAL but are our best estimates right now. We are working hard to finalise (i.e. check the details of) the numbers at which point a paper will be submitted which will hopefully be published in due course. At that point everyone will have access to the whole story/figures etc.
2) The trends are from the period 2004 to 2012 and are obtained by combining CryoSat ice volume with ice volume from NASA's ICESat mission for years 2003-2008 (see Kwok et al, JGR, 2009).
3) The trends are for the two campaign periods which ICESat operated in each year that overlap with the times of year when CryoSat-2's provides data. That is a month during October/November (ON) and February/March (FM).
4) The numbers refer only to the central Arctic (the ICESat domain) and cannot always be compared with the PIOMAS "whole arctic domain" available on the PIOMAS website (i.e. there are times of year when some ice lies outside the central Arctic).
5) Both ICESat and CryoSat-2 measurements have been validated (checked) against data gathered by aircraft and undersea moorings."
Etc.
Re: Windows 8 isn't that bad...
"...change is what IT is all about, good or bad, or how are we supposed to progress?"
Not change for the sake of change, and progress is supposed to be an arrow pointing in the "better" direction. The "Modern Metro Monkey" interface is absurd for anything but a phone, diagonally-challenged display or food pellet motivational experiments with lower primates and the alternate desktop looks almost exactly like Mandrake ca 1999.
But the world needs optimists, so good on you.
Re: Yeh right........
Or, more precisely, you'll eat the dogfood that is put in your dish by your master, once you're sufficiently famished.
"It's only a big start button..."
Put another way, "it's only a big turd you didn't want, need or ask for, in the middle of your screen. Get used to it!"
Re: how I see it panning out....
"MS have already stated that enterprise versions of Win8 will have the ability to "side load" apps so that inhouse apps can be written and deployed."
And there's no problem with the notion that MS is moving the window of "normal" OS behavior to "here are the new, tighter caveats under which you may create or obtain software to be installed on your computer, restrictions you did not ask for but rather we are imposing you, unasked."
Amazing how people's concept of what's normal and acceptable can be slowly and subtly shifted beyond any recognition.
Do a mental exercise, imagine it's 10 years ago and Microsoft was launching whatever it was they launched back then. With that announcement, they drastically restrict how you may obtain software, where you may obtain, dictating even that you'll pay for the "privilege" of loading "unapproved' software at all. Would you have been ok with that?
Apple is author of the real-world implementation of this evil, of course. Goes to show that "think different" doesn't always mean "think well."
Oh, so tired...
It's summer in England. Tomorrow is likely to be warmer than a day in January. Can you say >exactly< what the temperature tomorrow will be? Because you can't, does that mean you also can't make a reasonable case it'll likely be colder in January?
Please, come up with something more original.
Simple is best
"Simple methods are all that is required to extract signals. If you have to use methods that are trickier than that - then in the hands of inexperienced or opportunistic scientists you can get results don't make a whole lot of sense."
Yeah. If you happen to have a bird's-eye view of the Arctic and you see that year-on-year ice in the Arctic is diminishing, you simply conclude that ice there is melting because the Arctic is getting warmer. No need to resort to tortured cycles of ice expansion, retreat, etc.
Ice melts when it warms above 0. Doesn't get any simpler.
"Took me about 5 mins to get my bearings and after that no problems. "
Begging the question, "why?" Why are you dropped into a foreign landscape with your mental map crumpled?
Praise be that Microsoft is not in charge of the pencil. One day they'd be shipped in the form of pretzels, and we'd then be listening to optimists telling us "once you figure out how to push your fingers through the loop, no problem!"
Safety at last!!
"Windows RT, the ARM version, goes a step further by prohibiting desktop software installation completely. At last, a safe and secure Windows, at least relative to the standards of the past."
Microsoft has finally realized how to make us all safe from themselves: put us each in our own little jail, with Microsoft as jailer. They'll sell us breakfast, lunch and dinner as well, and allow us outside mail if the contents are ok with them.
Well done, MS, especially the part where we all know we're going to stumble into our cell and slam our own door behind us. You've pulled that stunt so many times, we just can't help it.
Posted in Nasa guides Mars Rover with Kinect
I was involved in a high school robotics competition this past year, as a mentor. Teams were given free Kinects to use for controlling these machines, which were competing in a sort-of-basketball game. A lot of beautiful software, loads of lovely hardware, many terrific implementations that would shame not a few professional builders but nary a Kinect to be seen controlling any robot, not in our division which included about 200 teams.
Kinect is largely useless for this type of work. The screenshot is not at all surprising.
Re: Might have known
"... but now, you're just flailing about making mind-numbingly stupid changes like you're in some kind of death throes. It's _almost_ sad to watch..."
Like one of those infected ants that attaches itself to the underside of a leaf and dribbles fungal spores onto the other ants down below.
We're the other ants. No matter how we protest, we always catch the stupidity and grow it.
Re: Locus of natural stupidity
RFID ring paired w/gun? Gun would need batteries, but then guns need bullets too and that does not seem to be an issue.
There's no perfect solution. In my mind, "well regulated militia" means that quite opposite from selling guns to random people who're often crazy, gun ownership should come with responsibilities including membership in "a well regulated militia" whether that be some form of corps where training must be completed before gun ownership can happen or a more permissive arrangement where "well regulated" means "you participate in paying for accidental mayhem caused by proliferation of guns."
Microsoft Ultimate Dogfood Edition
"Office 365 Fully Packaged Product (FPP)"
Here in the US we can buy something yellow and waxy and slightly pungent, sold as "cheese"; look at the label closely and the actual proper name is "cheese food substitute."
Microsoft software product substitute. Yummy!
Please don't hit me again
Or for the denizens of the weird ecosystem, "please, hit me again, and harder; my 'experience' is beginning to leave me unexcited."
How nice for Microsoft that they own a bunch of compliant Sims and can toy with them at will. How sad for the Sims.
How wonderful it is that pencil and paper are pretty much safe from megalomaniacs bent on repeated transformation.
Locus of natural stupidity
How about the US Supreme Court? Can't tell difference between a "well regulated militia" and somebody who leaves a weapon with a bullet in the chamber and the safety off for her kid to find.
SCOTUS can't parse a sentence with two clauses. Now that's stupid.
Gun owners in the US should be required to purchase and maintain insurance policies to pay for the mayhem they're causing.
Classy address; "@aol.com"
Like?
Better to read the complete press release. Fimbul is one of many ice shelves;
Release:
http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2012/2012-31.shtml
Other ice shelves:
http://ess.uci.edu/researchgrp/velicogna/files/increasing_rates_of_ice_mass_loss_from_the_greenland__and_antarctic_ice_sheets_revealed_by_grace.pdf
Lewis knows this and now hopefully some other people do.
Hall of mirrors
Sweet paragraph of self-cite Gish gallop at the end of the piece. Thank you for snapping me out of the impending hypnosis you induced, Lewis!
As usual I'm left wondering what else in The Register is credible.
Nokia is surely congratulating itself for tying its future to Microsoft.
Kill the children, rewrite the will for the new cuckoo in the nest, then- uh-oh.
I wonder if Elop is drawing two salaries?
MSChimera
The jackalope is considered "prior art" so MS has no patent worries on this one.
Re: it's all about tablets
Shorter: prepare to squint.
Re: Consider this...
Last time I tried it (a couple of years ago) my Trash-80 still worked.
I just can't throw it away. I paid for it w/proceeds from a janitorial job; the damned thing represents more toilet scrubbing than I care to remember.
New design paradigm
Actually will be a 13" model but that measurement does not reflect screen dimensions.
In point of fact, the new MacBook Pro won't have a screen. Apple is once again showing the way to elegance of form and simplicity of operation by eliminating the visual complication and frustrating content of a display.
Operation of the device will consist of placing it on a surface and staring at it intently; users will find they need make very little adjustment to the new paradigm.
Sometime next year Apple will provide a unified, seamless user experience across its entire range by eliminating the keyboard from the MacBook and the display from the iPhone. The resulting featureless slabs of plastic and metal-- sold in various sizes-- will be the ultimate expression of refined design sensibility, and coincidentally will be wildly profitable as they will require no electronic components for proper operation.
Posted in Retina Display detachment
My SO was just nailed by the ethernet cost-savings/Apple shareholder advantage program on the Air, on her last trip. Sheraton in Huntsville, Alabama: no wifi in rooms. It never even occurred to us to check the Air to see if it had an ethernet port before this; -all- reasonable equipment does, right? Nope. My wife was terribly thrilled and pleased that Apple helped her "Think Different" and stand out in the crowd by doing her do her email etc. down in the lobby of her hotel.
On the other hand she just took off on another trip this morning, equipped w/the $30 Apple super-duper speed retarding USB-ethernet adapter so at least somebody's smiling (not us, shareholders of course...).
No ethernet is stupid, only slightly less so than the people who return to buy this stuff a second time after the first go 'round. Once the Air dies we'll "switch," just like Apple would like.
Amazing what a mess things become when the parasite load of shareholders becomes large enough. MS has a lot of of mouths to feed and it shows.
Re: Has this become a bankruptcy race between Balmer & Elop?
Elop's the "Manchurian Candidate," same deal as the export to SGI was. Remember that debacle?
Re: Metro was designed by experts
Remember, Windows 8 and Metro were designed by Microsoft, the true experts in computing.
So -now- they're expert, having been ignorant for the past 20 years?
Could use a dollop of coherence.
Re: They're making the wrong one redundant
One sold fairly well considering it had no support, the other is selling quite poorly despite enormous resources.
Begging the question "why" but there's where we swerve into speculation.
Posted in Japan still in love with the fax
When dealing w/printed forms filled out manually, wretched software for scanners means it's actually much faster to drop the form in the feeder of a fax machine and punch in a phone number, as opposed to discovering whether or not the scanner driver has mysteriously gone tits up, necessitating a reboot.
HP's been selling "all-in-one" fax/print/scan machines for ~20 years now and over that period they've accomplished a remarkable feat: the software for these devices has grown steadily worse for the entire time. If they'd just freeze their product cycle for a few days or even just minutes and actually try eating their own rubbish they might get a clue as to why they're in a death spiral.
