* Posts by Tom 7

8318 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009

James Webb Space Telescope runs one last dress rehearsal for its massive golden mirrors before heading to launchpad

Tom 7

Re: Oh the irony

I would have thought you could just get an off the shelf adapter to connect a 5 cone to a 6 rocket.

Google Docs users, you are on notice: Code rewrite may break browser extensions

Tom 7

Re: Accessibility?

If your document that needs formatting that's not available in O'Level HTML the chances are you wont be able to remember what that particular feature was meant to mean anyway.

Tom 7

Its not like HTML hasnt got and formatting options and fonts.

Reinventing the wheel and trying to streamline things by getting rid of those ugly bolts around the middle.

Man paralyzed from neck down uses AI brain implants to write out text messages

Tom 7

Getting there!

There's a surprising number of people out there really need this.

Preliminary report on Texas Tesla crash finds Autosteer was 'not available' along road where both passengers died

Tom 7

Re: As a motorcyclist....

I used to have a VW MkII camper - because it couldn't do anything interesting I could drive it all the way from the top of Scotland to Nr London and step out fresh as a daisy. Would have been nice to do 70 up hills and not the crawler lane but because it was so limited you couldn't get stressed about anything.

43 years and 14 billion miles later, Voyager 1 still crunching data to reveal secrets of the interstellar medium

Tom 7

Re: Shades of Spirit

Or it could just look at the news channel and realise that its better to stay out there.

Tom 7

Re: Progress...

After a heavy session in a country pub we wandered over to a massive radio tower to see if we could climb it. Very heavily protected - apparently someone had bas jumped off it and they'd upgraded the security. We found this out the next night talking to someone in the pub who'd been working there and was very pleased we were too pissed to try the gate with he hadn't locked- why would you at 3 am? We were giggling round the perimeter trying to find an overhanging tree to fall out of.

Nasdaq's 32-bit code can't handle Berkshire Hathaway's monster share price

Tom 7

Re: WhatIf...

You dont get hyperinflation today. Your turn of the markets until the market stops being the market.

Tom 7

Re: Sinclair Basic

The Sinclair calculator was shit - it was however an utter masterpiece in squeezing the maximum useful functionality from a piece of silicon at the time.

Tom 7

O analogue computers half ones programming time was scaling everything to get it to fit in a useful part of the computers range and then scaling it back to the real world. Even 32 bit FP numbers made life so much easier for many of us.

Tom 7

BRK is a 6502 CPU assembly code mnemonic for a breakpoint,

Which is really handy for helping people learn how assembly code works and is a fantastic programming aid to preventing the articles aspersion!

http://www.visual6502.org/

US declares emergency after ransomware shuts oil pipeline that pumps 100 million gallons a day

Tom 7

Re: One word:

There is in the bosses heads.

The swift in-person response is part of the service (and nothing to do with the thing I broke while trying to help you)

Tom 7

Set a few machines up in Paris once

came home and loads of complaints about very slow responses on an NT server. Then I realised I'd got bored after a couple of bottles of red and a whole round of Camembert and a pack of butter and two baguettes for lunch and had played with the Pipes 3d screensaver and obscene French wrap around textures for it. This of course used every last drop of cpu it could and it took me what seemed like lifetime to ISDN into the machine, kill the bloody screensaver and disable the bloody thing. Would very much have liked to have been sent back for some more Camembert - its the President stuff in the round wooden box that in the UK is fuck all like the stuff you get in France.

You can listen right here to the whir of a robot helicopter flying on an alien world

Tom 7

Turned everything up to 11

and still couldn't hear it on the laptop. Will try it on headphones if I can find them.

Visual Basic 6 returns: You've been a good developer all year. You have social distanced, you have helped your mom. Here's your reward

Tom 7

Lazarus is available for all your Delphi needs. Even connects to the real world!

The Starship has landed. Latest SpaceX test comes back to Earth without igniting fireballs

Tom 7

Schroedingers video

If the video allows you to observe the whole launch and landing you collapse the wave goodbye function!

File this next to Mars bars under 'things that should not be deep-fried': Marks & Spencer's Colin the Caterpillar

Tom 7

Re: And from the crispy chrysalis emerged...

I was in a Tesco today and they wanted IIRC 3.90 for a scotch egg fromt he deli counter. That would have to hatch into a golden goose to be worth it.

Spent Chinese rocket stage set to make an uncontrolled return to Earth

Tom 7

If you can

keep us updated. If I find I could have watched it burn up from my garden I'll cry!

More than 1,000 humans fail to beat AI contender in top crossword battle

Tom 7

Re: How does a computer solve crosswords?

My mum used to muller the Telegraph crossword in less than ten minutes. As a science geek who gave up on word shit quickly I never really bothered with that sort of thing. Then one night after we'd had a few drinks when I was back from uni dad brought the paper back from work and I sat next and asked her what she was thinking as she did it. It seemed the compiler left very easy to spot clues which really stood out if you didnt really read the words. Once you;d spotted those that merely left the anagrams which are really tricky after half a bottle of Talisker. I cant remember the name of the compiler but I found his quite easy after that if I found a copy at reception at job interviews after that.

Tom 7

Re: Unfair comparison

And yet, strangely, AI seems to be providing the greatest step forwards in Nuclear Fusion by controlling the plasma for longer periods than ever before!

Tom 7

Re: One of those US crosswords

Old Guardian cryptic: Hark! Sexual deviation, 5,2,4,4.

Can't get that printer to work? It's not you. It's that sodding cablin.... oh beautiful job with that cabling, boss

Tom 7

Re: Time was...

I worked down't pit for a while an there were first aid stations in various places and seconded the bloke who replaced the morphine in them. We'd barely got out of sight of one box when we heard it being cracked open and running back it had already been lifted! Never found out who it was but most of the miners found it utterly disgusting and the culprit would have needed a very large dose if discovered.

Tom 7

Re: Time was...

One place I worked got some new cheaper cleaners in and we had serious problems with static taking out everything left right and centre because they actually shampooed the carpets and removed the anti-static goop from them. You couldn't walk across a room and touch a door handle without swearing.

Tom 7

Re: Time was...

I used to get quite a lot of very reasonably priced stuff from a mate in the pub until I found out he was security guard. at a building site. However I dont feel as guilty as I would if I was the developer.

Tom 7

Re: Time was...

Its all part of a general accountancy short sightedness. Some things have to be paid for but some people are allowed to avoid it and think they are clever as a result. Its like out of town shopping - lower rates means they can charge less so the in town stuff suffers and those living in the town end up paying more in council tax than they saved out of town and have to pay fuel to get their because they saved 10p on their council tax and the bus service has gone so they have to pay few quid to drive to the out of town shops and lose a wheel in the pot hole they saved 10p on their council tax not fixing so that's another £50 and some serious wear on the suspension. Today I have to drive 20 mile to a town to get a plumbing part I used to be able to get a couple of miles away but the shop couldn't afford the council tax and rent and is now a dog charity shop so I'm paying tax to the landlord and extra fuel and car wear and tear because someone fell for voting for an idiot who promises to save them a fraction of that in council tax.

Tom 7

Re: Time was...

Back in the late 80s my next door neighbour ran a cleaning company. I cant remember the exact details but the government started subsidised low wages with benefits so he was able to rip off his workers and the clients and the government simultaneously. He became very rich very quickly and died when he upgraded his car too quickly. He seemed a decent bloke but was caught like a kid let lose in a candy store. I had many a drink with him and he was always of the opinion that if he didnt do it someone else would but he did feel a line had been crossed.

Helsinki Syndrome: Ubuntu utterly fails to boot on metro

Tom 7

Re: Hopefully..

Hang on, my flaming torches need to reboot!

NASA comes up with COVID-19 infection detector that's out of this world – E-Nose built from space station gear

Tom 7

Re: E-Nose you know

Never a good idea to name your product after a Lancashire school swot!

Tom 7

Re: Possible false positives?

I'd imagine Covid has dozens of unique VOCs While it only has 15 genes as it is a virus when reproducing in our cells the replication frequently fails leaving segments of incompletely transcribed proteins and its very likely lots of these will be unique to covid. Its what the T cells use to chase it down within cells and prevent it reproducing.

NASA’s getting really good at this flying a helicopter on Mars thing

Tom 7

Re: Refreshing!

No I haven't!

Tom 7

Re: All well and good

My hens aren't laying!

Tom 7

Re: First step towards human colonisation

The only useful pizza delivery system is pair of hands. We have a local chap who drives his wood fired oven around to various places (including my local pub/brewery) and I am now of the opinion that pizza is indeed a food and not something that resembles the box it came in. And the new wild garlic pesto is pretty dam cool too!

Tom 7

Re: Awesome

I think there might be a problem with the winds. Rovers dont work to well when they're dragged across the Martian surface on their side.

Tom 7

Re: Very cool

Expecting a bit of Marvining as its called up there.

Technoking of comedy? Elon Musk to host Saturday Night Live

Tom 7

Re: If I ever watched it

Its one of those shows you are told is fantastic - apart from the 10 or so shows you actually watched and thought were meh. I wonder if he's going to do pedo jokes.

BOFH: Postman BOFH's Special Delivery Service

Tom 7

Re: Peace and quiet

I have a friend who did an MBA in her thirties. First person I've met who came out if more educated than when they went in. I did wonder having a look at the course work for it and the PPE degree to see if there was something in their that can be used as a peaceful weapon that can reduce a country to complete imbeciles and then realised its already been done!

Tom 7

Re: Yep

Vegan lard? Something that makes you put on weight but has no taste?

Tom 7

Re: Still laughing..

Surprised to find I was hoping it would be mailed to me. God I could have done with one of those in 1987 and still want it even though I cannot for the life of me remember why.

George Clooney of IT: Dribbling disaster and damp disk warnings scare the life out of innocent user

Tom 7

Re: I remember a Apple joke

I need his stylist at the moment. My normal hairdresser is booked until Wave 4.

Tom 7

Re: Am I Old?

I remember it well. Where I worked at the time the only people who wouldnt have either laughed or sighed and carried on as normal were the bosses with no IT experience hired to prevent progress in IT at the time.

Never play pranks on people who dont at least have a chance of working out what's going on and that you know well enough so you aren't surprised they are 3rd Dan in something that meant you spent ten minutes laid out cold because they were so stressed by what was happening finding out you did it bypasses all their control circuits as an 'Its OK he'll find it funny' mate of mine found out even though we'd trued to dissuade him on moral grounds. Must say we were delighted to find out the victim was a 3rd Dan.

Canonical and Microsoft get cosier with Active Directory integration in Ubuntu 21.04

Tom 7

Re: AD has been around for decade at least

But you dont get MS support not having a clue how to help you either. For many PHBs the ability to pass the buck is worth a lot.

Sucks to be you, any aliens living anywhere near Proxima Centauri's record-smashing solar flare

Tom 7

Re: move the Earth to a higher orbit,

On the moon and use that to gently nudge us outwards. Its about 1/16th the SA of the earth so well bit enough to do the job.

Origami... in spaaaaace: Inflatable folded objects discovery brings new meaning to blowing up buildings

Tom 7

Re: Innovation?

I think you missed the bit about them being rigid and bistable! If you punscture the inflation tubes it doesnt collapse.

Annoyed because I've been trying do do something with inflatable foam that goes rigid when it sets - this leapfrogs that to some degree - I'd like to see an geodesic greenhouse that comes in a suitcase though!

iPhone XR caught fire after getting trapped in airline passenger's seat

Tom 7

I guess phones will have to banned from flights now

the iPhone bomber has a new way of causing passenger inconvenience.

God bless this mess: Study says UK's Christian beliefs had 'important' role in Brexit

Tom 7

Re: I find myself saying...

They must be a bit obscure. Everything I get from the continent is far cheaper than here. Or it was until the start of the year.

On a dusty red planet almost 290 million km away... NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flies

Tom 7

Re: Think of it like a robotic space cow, munching on the earth's atmosphere.

And the solar wind...

UK digital secretary Oliver Dowden starts national security probe into proposed Arm-Nvidia merger

Tom 7

It would have to be non-executive. If not time to short Nvidia shares!

Tom 7

Re: Bit late.

Only on the comedy circuit.

Won't somebody please think of the children!!! UK to mount fresh assault on end-to-end encryption in Facebook

Tom 7

... basics of police record-keeping and investigatory techniques.

"suggesting that time and effort spent railing against social media companies is better spent on teaching and reinforcing the basics of police record-keeping and investigatory techniques." but that will only work if you pay the people in house enough to prevent them being poached by competing companies. I've worked in the public sector a few times and been amazed at the offers I got to basically not do my job any-more as it was interfering with their operations - which were mainly getting managers to sign contracts that were effectively ways of preventing the said managers having any control over their data.