Posts by the spectacularly refined chap 1263 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Dec 2008
It doesn't work given the evidence available though. We know the liquid portion spins at the same rate as the surface due to the existence of the South Atlantic Anomaly, where convection currents are the "wrong" way round causing a localised weakness in the magnetic field. Equally we know the solid core turns at the same rate as the liquid one since the existence of fern-like crystal structures growing from the solid core, aligned with the magnetic field, are inferred from speed differences in seismic waves north-south and across the equator.
Theory has to fit the available evidence, and the current consensus is that it's down to plate tectonics. I do not claim to be an expert in these matters so I trust them.
Bulk composition of Venus is essentially similar to Earth, including a nickel/iron core. Venus's slightly lower density is explained by lower gravitational compression as opposed to chemical makeup.
If you really knew why Venus lacks a global magnetic field a Nobel prize would surely be on its way, because noone really knows for sure. Current thinking is that it is ultimately down to elevated temperatures boiling off all the water. That means it can't be subducted under the surface, and in turn shuts down any system of plate tectonics through lack of lubrication. That traps heat inside the planet and ultimately stops convection within the core. No convection = no magnetic field.
Like I said, it's speculative and little more than a best guess, but it's the one preferred at this moment in time. I recall hearing of a proposal to put seismometers on the Venusian surface, that is challenging given the conditions but potentially a goer with the right equipment. If memory serves that was a proposal submitted at the same time as what ultimately became Messenger.
...to cite the next time a solar powered project fails due to lack of power, whether that's dust, shadow, orientation or whatever else.
It's easy to advocate an RTG when you're not the one holding the purse strings, trying to source material or integrate them into a project. These are long standing issues and not easily overcome. Sure you can set up some research reactor to produce scientific quantities of an isotope, but for bulk quantities you really need commercial power stations to do the job at scale.
The likes of Magnox (here in the UK) are mostly history now, because of both economic and proliferation concerns.
AT&T ultimately missed a trick there. The Design and Implementation of 4.x BSD by McKusick, Marshall et all became the standard reference for anyone studying Unix internals.
Even recently I've been known to recommend them - there are guides on the innards of Linux but it is a) more complex b) changes rapidly and c) is getting a bit grubby really - large parts of it are well overdue for a refactor if not redesign.
Linux distributions provide a much wider range of choice. Don't like Gnome Shell? Use xfce instead. Prefer old-school init and admin? Slackware is still going strong. You get the drift.
There's some truth to that, but it's less true than it was historically. To my eyes Linux peaked around or shortly before the millennium, say the time of the 2.0 and 2.2 kernels. You had a decent traditional Unix system, slap a copy of Motif on there (proprietary at the time, LessTif existed but was buggy) and you had a decent enough system, a few quirks and limitations but nothing's perfect.
Then came the desktops, and other large scale projects counter to the Unix traditions such as CUPS - SystemD is just the latest in a long line. At first KDE was a library and few applications, Gnome had ambitions but wasn't ready for primetime. Slowly they became integrated wholes and you lost the ability to select components on a piece by piece basis that had always been the strength of Unix. For example, what if KDE has that really nice applet to configure your WiFi, but you ditch KDE in favour of something else. Sorry can't use that now...
The ultimate evidence of this is these very reviews of each latest distro. Rarely do they discuss anything of substance, mainly it's the interface and eye candy. Sure you can change it, that doesn't mean it's easy. If it was why are there so many advocates for one distro over another?
Is that really what your insight comes down to? Essentially, I can write it down, so I may as well consider myself to own it?
SVB fell because it invested in T-bills in a declining bond market. It seems you could rather they had invested in a notepad and a pencil with which to write all those zeroes.
There's plenty of evidence that the books / gospels of the New Testament were cherry-picked from many different available ones...
The Dead Sea Scrolls didn't contain any candidate New Testament texts, most of them are too early and the rest are mostly of a secular nature.
What they did show, since it is Catholism at issue specifically here, is the heritage of many Old Testament books. A Protestant Bible has a section in the middle labelled "Apocrypha", neither Old or New Testament and not considered divine work. Catholic Bibles include them in the main body of the Old Testament. The Protestant argument for exclusion centred on they must be more recent since they had never been found in Hebrew.
Until the Dead Sea Scrolls found many of them in Hebrew...
Yes, the Churches (any Church) have a lot to apologise for, but making up fantasy to suit an ad hoc argument does not really advance your cause.
I played will this kind of thing a couple of years back as a thought experiment, the motivation there was an explanation for dark energy beginning with a playful notion that the expansion of space causes a kind of "dilution" of the amount of time in it.
Problem is it's impossible to analyse in anything other than the most superficial terms. When you talk of rates or speeds you automatically reference time. When you talk of time dilation effects due to relativity you are doing so with a frame of reference, either one part of the system or an "external" observer.
When you talk of the speed of time changing across the entire universe you reference it against what, exactly? Does the question even make sense on a conceptual level?
When I worked in mobile telecoms it wasn't even the carrier's choice, relinquished numbers had to be returned to a central pool after a brief grace period.
Caused no end of arguments, particularly with number changes at the customer request. Didn't matter how much you warned them, they'd be back a couple of days later...
"No, I've changed my mind. I want my number back..."
"Sorry, that number belongs to the government now. No, you can't have it back."
However, you can be absolutely sure your backup software won't have written any wrong data due to filesystem corruption.
Not really, ZFS is a large, complex chunk of code and has had and will have bugs that render an entire pool bricked. Sure it'll pick up media errors but it can't protect against those of its own making. It doesn't matter how many snapshots you have to roll back to when they are all unusable.
Not a theoretical concern, it has happened many times and will happen again. Used to its strengths, yes it gives several additional layers of protection, but blind faith in its capabilities is asking for trouble.
I still prefer Gnu's tools and use them where still possible. If something will configure with gnu autoconf, compile with gcc, link with GNU ld,.. that's what I'm using. I would not install a Linux system that is not GNU based (i.e. glibc, libstdc++ from gcc etc.). I'm not going to be dependent on a distributor for patched sources for things because they won't compile against the shit they have chosen.
That's your choice. Why do you want to deny others the same choice?
And yes, often the Linux option is the shit one. I was about to describe a couple of specific examples, but I have experience of flagging up issues with prima donna authors who can do no wrong. Yes, that goes for libraries that are essentially universal on any Linux system.
I can understand removing SystemD but why the push to remove GNU?
I suppose it just shows how far detached Linux has become from its roots. 30 years ago "open" referred to Open Systems, not Open Source - the idea you could freely migrate between suppliers and implementations. Much recent development in the Unix world has thoroughly shat on that idea, beginning with the assumptions that Unix=Linux, make=GNU Make and cc=gcc, then X must be running one of a limited number of desktop environments, then it uses a particular messaging system not specified in any standard (DBus), now it uses a particular init system.
Make no mistake - that is still a walled garden vendor lock in, the fact the specific implementation is "open source" means diddly squat as far as interoperability is concerned. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it and all that.
Consider corporate use. I really don't understand why people will turn to Twitter for a customer service issue with Grittish Bass, for example, but they do.
Do you want to be one of the ones they can't respond to because they've hit their 200 tweets for the day?
It can mean anything though. I'm most familiar with the alarm/indicator light on rack mount Sun kit. It could be turned on and off under admin control, if for example you wanted to indicate "this is the machine to put that memory upgrade in" or indeed "this is the machine we've decommissioned". Works well enough provided there are not too many machines with the light on at once.
There was so much kick back on that they reconsidered, it was alleged it would discriminate against the elderly.
They did apply further funding cuts to it, in particular no through the night news updates and many articles are clearly the first couple of paragraphs of an online story with literally no human thought as to whether such an abridged article makes sense: some are two or three sentences of teaser and then end of article, without even a clue as to what the story was about.
The issue isn't "Unattended operation", that's been happening for years, the issue is why have Wi-Fi enabled washing machines & fridges? Remote diagnosis of faults? A marketing ploy aimed at the gullible? Or simply because "Everything's got Wi-Fi now"?
Penny: How are flower barrettes gonna appeal to men?
Howard: We add Bluetooth!
Sheldon: Brilliant! Men love Bluetooth!
Penny: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You want to make a hair barrette with Bluetooth?
Sheldon: Penny - Everything is better with Bluetooth.
The only giveaway that it's fiction is that it's a couple of weeks too late now for that "you've booked it for this time last year". First half of the month, yep, all too familiar.
As is scheduling a meeting with people you see all the time. Or like my boss, ringing up to arrange a time for a phone call.
But it's 20% of the workforce. If it is all zero hours stuff that's more hours for the non-unionised staff to pick up.
Apart from those that refused to cross the picket line of course. Those can legally be sacked on day 1. The union staff have six weeks of legal protection before they get their P45s, if they haven't got the hint by then.
I'm not saying it's right, but that is the legal reality.
Difficult, the complexities of such a system are beyond the time that can be dedicated to a student project. It's quite possible to graduate well from even one of the more prestigious institutions never having written a program over 1000 lines. Ideas of e.g. project management are essentially theoretical on projects of such limited scope. Requirements analysis for a project of this kind of scope would exceed what can be done in a third year project by itself.
No version of Linux has passed the certification testing. Ever. Nor could it, Linux is a kernel and the specification describes an environment. Even then an incomplete one - admin tools are largely beyond its scope as are many other aspects you take for granted. Even at the most basic level - for example, there is no notion of what is or isn't a system call.
What has been certified in the past is a couple of specific versions of specific distros. Distros that specifically aimed at conformance and not your vanilla Linux distro. Remember that POSIX compliance is explicitly not an aim of the GNU project.
That was the philosophy behind Sun's Niagara processors, best part of twenty years ago now. Instead of spending ever more transistors on ever longer pipelines, ever more complex branch prediction and ever larger caches simplify the whole core, kit it out for a shedload of threads, stick as many cores on there as we can and crank up the clock speed.
The result was the world's fastest processor bar none. Didn't stop them getting swallowed by Oracle a few years later.
I think I've mentioned here before the University of Manchester's Computer Science building was supposedly built without a heating system, just a circulation system to move the heat from the machine room to the rest of the building. Certainly when I was there in the late 90s the building appeared to have no functional heating system - the idea was predicated on computers remaining valve based.
Have a mate who works there now, apparently the machine room is no longer even there now, it's an office for IT support. And no, the heating still doesn't work.
The problem I've noticed of late is the product range. A lot of it seems to be be gaming crap. Logitech used to be a reliable source if you wanted simple, basic but quality, refined kit. Now the keyboards all seem to have a million extra "multimedia" keys that are of approximately zero practical use. Mice with dozens of buttons which potentially may have some use only some sotware would used them for something useful (no, forward and back in the web browser only doesn't count).
Then there are obvious gaps in the range: I have to reluctantly concede it isn't just Logitech that have given up on three button mice without the cursed scroll wheel, but I was surprised last month they couldn't sell me a no-nonsense Bluetooth mouse. They had gamers options for £50 a pop, although I can't see the gamers settling for Bluetooth, also a few options seemingly thinner than a sheet of paper for no discernable reason, but a simple, usable, workaday mouse? Not in sight.
But as stated elsewhere in this thread what practical impact does it have? Ordinary Russian people can't get new chips and software. Meanwhile in the rest of the world these are essentially unregulated commodities. The Russian government and military can pick these up with very little hassle.
Who is the argument with exactly?
From the article:
We suspect that it wouldn't be a huge amount of work to exchange the RS232 port for Ethernet, such adapters exist. That could turn the Sidecar into a Wi-Fi-to-Ethernet adapter.
Congratulations, you've just invented the wireless bridge. Also available off the shelf from Amazon for perhaps £20...
Newton's can do wireless directly. It's been a while since I misplaced mine, back then you were limited to 802.11b with WEP encryption, don't know if it's advanced since then but the hardware is limited to 5V 16bit PCMCIA cards so I suspect not. And yes you could browse the web, at the time it wasn't even particularly uncomfortable, but of course bitrot set in a long time ago. 20+ year old browsers are not a lot of use on the modern web.
Does anyone know what sort of market share Gigabyte have in the server market? It seems the wrong way around given the fat margins in there opposed to the commodity market, assuming this is a prelude to a sell off off course.
Only reason I can see it would be an attractive proposition is that if they are not shifting enough volume compared to design and set up costs. Sure the server market is dominated by the big players, e.g. Lenovo, HPE, Fujitsu, Dell and if it was off the shelf parts I'd probably opt for Supermicro myself, for a server at least, but surely they're shifting enough kit to make disposal an unattractive option?
There are any number of rules to which accounts may be prepared and many of them have legitimate roles. Cash based accounting comes to mind - essentially how much money do we have to hand right now? It's often the key metric at play in startups and companies going through a rapid growth spurt simply so they can see if they can pay the bills for next month or next quarter.
It's frowned upon for companies with lots of investors not privy to management decisions because it conceals the level of liabilities going forward.
Stellar ignition requires both pressure and temperature. It's the momentum given by the temperature that initially overcomes the repelling electromagnetic force and allows the strong force to take over. It's then the density that ensures that the fusion byproducts trigger similar interactions in nearby material to start a chain reaction.
The existance of this galaxy may provide evidence for a new stellar evolution route. Where smaller, old stars hang around for billions of years. Not burning through their fuel quickly and, as a result, not producing great quantities of heavy elements.
Theory already allows for small, slow burning stars. Small red dwarves are expected to spend trillions of years on the main sequence before they exhaust their fuel supply. The problem is that those same theories state such stars must also be metal rich.
If all stars were made of the same stuff then barring exceptional events they'd all be similar in size, the collapsing gas cloud would reach a point where the density and temperature is high enough to support nuclear fusion and bang! The star ignites, and radiation pressure and the stellar wind prevents further accumulation of material barring e.g. a collision with another star.
The first stars were devoid of metals and so they had to be HUGE, there was nothing but the gravity of the collapsing hydrogen and helium to compress them together. As a result they are believed to have come in at a couple of hundred solar masses or so. Stars that large burn quickly and brightly, we can establish that from present day observation.
The more metallic the initial material you have, the more heavy elements you have compressing the proto-core together. As a result it can ignite at a far lower mass than its metal poor cousins.
I have looked at the first few paragraphs of the linked law but not gone through it in full. How is "radio equipment" defined? The example that comes to mind is site radios used by construction workers and kitchen fitters everywhere. If you don't know what I mean they're typically made by DeWalt, Makita, Bosch et al and use the same style of rechargeable batteries the same brand's cordless drill, circular saw etc use. Some of them can alternatively be plugged in and used as chargers for those same batteries. Are they caught up by this? Demanding USB charging on those seems superfluous at best.
Alternatively what about temporary cellular base stations for events or emergency/failure use? I would imagine most of the larger ones would be mains or diesel generator powered, but surely there are smaller battery units out there?
From the article:
Normally you don't need that to read and write to diskettes: it's only for things like handling floppies with formats other than the basic PC- and Mac- 1.4MB "high-density" format, or handling copy-protected disks, and so on. This sort of stuff won't work if you use a USB floppy drive, anyway: their embedded controllers only understand standard formats, and so can't handle classic Mac or Amiga double-density disks from the 1980s.
That's actually conflating two slightly different issues. The PC style high capacity formats such as DMF and XDF generally either crammed more sectors on a track or used a higher than normal number of tracks.
The former reduced the inter-sector spacing demanding higher tolerance in speeds and timings, and so was only really suited for single pass format-and-copy use such as software distribution. They were decidedly "dodgy" for general purpose use especially between machines, any slight mistiming could cause the end of one sector to overwrite the start of the next.
The extra tracks were of a "this is out of spec but works on most drives and disks" thing, relying on the fact most drive heads could physically seek slightly past the track 40 or 80 position and most disks still had usable media for another couple of tracks. Fine, until you encountered a drive or a disk where those assumptions didn't hold.
The Mac and Atari high cap formats worked differently: those used additional sectors per track but only on the outer (longer) tracks. Timing and spacing were preserved by physically spinning the disk slower when accessing those outer tracks. It is not a question of software or even firmware - a standard PC floppy drive is mechanically incapable of altering speed to read those disks.
Newer systems remain compatible with older ones. No backwards compatibility is lost here. This is about going forwards and advancing in time to newer system facilities. Old code will still run.
There are a few cases where backwards compatibility has been dropped. The historic gate A20 switch comes to mind. At first it was a motherboard feature, then a chipset feature before becoming a CPU feature when the memory controller moved on chip. At least it did until it was finally canned perhaps 10 years ago. Nobody really noticed, but how many people still work in 16 bit real mode?
Going the other way there comes a point where it makes sense to simply require new features. If you don't you end up with an ever increasing amount of code that is only used very rarely and in all likelihood not by the developers. Sometimes that code can be relatively self contained as is the case for FPU emulation for example, in which case yes it's a compiler switch. What about hardware AES? If you make the decision not to mandate it you have a decent chunk of code famously difficult to implement correctly that is lying unused for the majority of users. At a certain point it makes sense to no longer support options of interest to an ever dwindling number of users and make full use of advances in technology.
The problem with that theory is that you need an atmosphere to get Aurora's, and Mars's is so weak.
A thin atmosphere, here on Earth they are high altitude phenomena, all over by the time you hit the Karman line, still at sub-millibar levels, and they begin much higher, well above e.g. ISS territory. Pressure at the surface on Mars is several times higher so more than enough atmosphere to go at.
Bollocks. There's so much that doesn't ring true here that I simply can't enumerate it.
If you had the evidence you describe it'd be a slam dunk in court or for any regulator. I very much doubt any hacker expecting a profit would have a "database" on the host system to gain access to with your expert knowledge, it'll be a simple list to blast through.
I could carry on more or less forever but the bell for last orders has just gone.
1. Who uses the Ordnance Survey national grid in the southern hemisphere? It only makes sense over relatively small areas. The US doesn't use such a system for that very reason. If you want to extend ours below the equator you end up with up is down style conditions.
2. The Earth is not a bar magnet, the magnetic field is rather funkier than that. The biggest "issue" is the South Atlantic Anomaly, which affects mostly the southern hemisphere. Therefore it doesn't follow that magnetic north for us is 180° opposite of magnetic south for you.
I guess if they had made the films Snatch or Lock Stock and tailored for a non UK audience, they would have taken out all the British parts and made... I don't know... Oceans Eleven instead.
They've done it plenty of times in the past. The remake of The Italian Job comes to mind. Take a quintessentially British film and remove every last trace of Britishness from it. And 99% of the Italianess come to that.
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