Posts by Paul Shirley 2284 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2009
The surprise is no one admitted finding this earlier.
Microsoft MUST have done something that showed the same effect in the new Windows UI, they test a lot and would inevitably have caught this amount of difference. And went ahead with it anyway.
Still, nice to know what I and others were pointing out 2+ years ago has finally been confirmed. Who needs efficient if it can be pretty... oh, it's not even pretty.
Another user with few complaints about the infrastructure. The annual haggling the price down not so fun. Despite living in one of those red hotspots only 1 specific site showed repeated failures yesterday, hard to pin on VM.
However the superhub3 is the work of the devil. Bugridden, slowing to a crawl weekly and seemingly incapable of maintaining good WiFi connections to any device, however close. Luckily I'm too busy working to suffer it's known latency problems gaming, doubt they'll fix that before I retire though.
Losing that war just lowers the entry barrier for more customer friendly alternatives. There's no limit to how many sites the internet can support, if the abusive sites hide behind paywalls there's less competition for those that don't. If they go ad crazy they just become less fit to compete for our view.
What needs tackling is the dangerous tech being used to show advertising. Not just the abusive uses, the insecure 3rd party crap needs to end.
On a sufficiently powerful machine FF might be getting faster but invariably at the expense of using more resources. The occasional efforts to drop memory demand are usually wiped out within a couple of updates.
On a lower machine, FF performance has been falling off a cliff for a long time. Especially noticeable on mobile FF. My G4 runs it fairly smoothly if you ignore the idiotic refusal to adapt to small screens, on my older, slower GPad it's gone from slick and fast (after a rocky start) to barely usable with 1 tab now. About an order of magnitude slower than Chrome.
FF is being killed by it's own bloated resource demands in the only area of browser growth.
Still chuckle remembering the senior dev who knocked a hole in the outside wall of his tiny little office to vent an evaporative cooler. And how quickly it became the hottest room in the building. We all liked the guy but it was funnier not pointing out the reservoir needed refilling ;)
Yes, modern switchmode PSU's are pretty good at dealing with any voltage you throw at them, including wildly varying mains. Even the cheap disposable ones.
When my last UPS died more than a decade ago PC PSUs had improved enough to handle the brownouts and the short breaks I'd bought it for by themselves.
Forcing people into work destroys the economics of UI. You've retained the costs of operating a traditional welfare system while increasing the number of recipients 10 fold. And you have to do the coercion with no sanctions or it's not UI. Succeed and you're not likely to raise more tax than it costs to operate the system. Worse, the victims of coercion won't be paying the tax bill.
At every election we're promised a welfare system where working will always be better than claiming. A promise never delivered. UI is the first believable way to achieve that, at a cost the country can afford.
Depends on your workload. Flash storage is notorious for poor performance with small random access and low queue depths. NVMe doesn't fix that, I saw microscopic change moving from SATA SSD to fast MVMe M2. This Optane incarnation is good at those access patterns, but doesn't improve with larger reads.
For some workloads Optane could crush any NVMe flash device (for now). Just can't imagine what they are because the drivers aren't likely to actually cache data files.
re: "¹ The standard library does, but you can write a fully compliant C implementation without any file I/O functionality."
That's only true for a freestanding C implementation or non-compliant hosted implementation. A compliant hosted implementation is required to support the C standard lib. If you aren't learning on the most basic embedded hardware you'll have file io.
Some of you fell for the distraction. Spain hasn't threatened to take back Gibraltar. They've threatened to veto any trade deal including Gibraltar they don't like, specifically calling out that continuing to be a tax haven parked on their border will not be allowed.
What Howard was threatening was in effect, to send snatch crews over a hard border to herd workers into Gibraltar and ram border/customs barriers with lorries full of goods. In short to become pirates and smugglers.
Laughable and the direct result of Hammond+May threatening to become a tax haven moored just off the continent.
Imagination's problem is their tiled deferred rendering approach is no longer an advantage, is so old the patents must have expired anyway and Apple need an Opengl ES compliant device. Not an Imagination Technologies device. Khronos membership will protect them for most required IP in ES and there are plenty of ways to build such a device.
I expect IT will struggle to find any IP to sue over. There will be quirks that need working around, hiring staff from Imagination will help but doesn't have to imply IP theft. Especially useful if Apple need to continue supporting old hardware without Imagination support.
Standards make you replaceable.
3) add user
Learned the hard way, if you let Win10 switch a local account to an MS one, there's no way back. It will let you try but apparently it's never worked. If you bound your licence to an MS account, create a new MS login if you ever need to re-activate Win10, don't let the activation troubleshooter bork your local login.
Windows, the best argument for nightly drive imaging ever.
The size thing: since I bought my tablet I barely use my phone for anything but photos and calls. The only advantages the tablet has are screen size, 8.3" vs 5.5" and better speakers, everything else is substantially inferior. Turns out it's much more important to be able to see things comfortably on the screen and have controls that work with pudgy fingers, even if it works slower.
My phone is really just a convenient camera that can make calls and access the internet if there's no WiFi for the tab. A PIA to do anything else with.
Been trying to register and access the tax site for a couple of years now with no success. Feels like every time I give up for a few months I come back to a changed login process that still doesn't work. To make it worse trying to get gov ID had turned into farce because I don't have multiple photo ID.
It's a total cluster fuck with no sign they've even agreed on an architecture at the most basic level. Let retired before this ever works.
"it is her stated intention to make it a manifesto commitment to withdraw from the ECHR"
The question this raises is exactly when did she realise her dreams were incompatible with supporting Remain. From her invisibility throughout the referendum, I'd guess a few days into the campaign someone smacked her with a clue stick.
The only thing perforce supposedly does better is binary blobs. Better in the sense that it recognises they shouldn't be differed I suppose and that's led it to be the tool of choice in games dev.
Frankly it's just evil and regularly causes lost days fixing the workspaces when it fucks up.
@Maffski. "it just demonstrates that our understanding of those laws is incomplete"
We don't even know all the implications of the laws we think we understand. That remains the most likely end result here, that eventually someone will work out which 'understood' laws are responsible and we might even learn something new from it.
My local bus company recently upgraded their buses with WiFi, USB charging and 3 pin power sockets. The charging speed strongly suggests they isolated the USB ports (with string instead of conductors).
Took just days to discover using hair curlers in the power sockets crashes the bus electronics...
No explicit connection, however in 2007 the EU said:
"Any Member State deciding to withdraw from the Convention and therefore no longer bound to comply with it or to respect its enforcement procedures could, in certain circumstances, raise concern as regards the effective protection of fundamental rights by its authorities. Such a situation, which the Commission hopes will remain purely hypothetical, would need to be examined under Articles 6 and 7 of the Treaty on European Union."
Respect for human rights is a precondition of membership, respecting the EHCR is the most convenient way to demonstrate it. So the UK would be on unstable ground re EU membership if it rejected the EHCR, especially in the light of the snoopers charter and general right wing disrespect for human rights currently taking hold.
But you're leaving anyway lead by extreme right wingers so human rights aren't likely to play a big part in the future of England or their holiday homes in Wales.
Full double layer tin hat: leaking Hillary secrets during an election was deliberate provocation of the states and it's expected leader. Provocation that would increase pressure on both the UK and Sweden to not rendition him when he leaves the embassy. Attacking Trump would have the opposite effect of sending the snatch teams in without asking permission.
Probably the most disappointed man in the world with the Trump win.
"Sell fewer at higher prices? Good for business then, as their costs will drop too - increasing profit further..."
But isn't wealth a measure of consumption in a capitalistic society? Isn't it where all that wealth trade deals magic out of nowhere comes from? Selling fewer, at whatever price, is a loss of wealth.
"I don't see how Parliament can agree/disagree to the final terms of exit if it can't be reversed."
The assumption there is the UK has any control of the final terms. If the current crew are left in full control the EU have no reason to waste time on trade negotiations, 'hard brexit or no brexit' isn't a threat, it's a cold statement of how incompatible Mays team goals are with any deal acceptable to the EU27. Someone needs to bang heads together and inject a wider base of opinion into the brexit planning and looks like parliament is best placed.
They'll still be busy negotiating the mechanics of divorce long after the 2yr deadline passes anyway.
All A50 has to say about the issue is that to rejoin the EU, states must apply like any other new candidate for admission. That's about as far as you can get from a right to cancel. Right to leave then beg to get back in is more honest.
In reality if the EU27 unanimously agree nothing is forbidden. Cancelling remains a possibility, cancelling unilaterally not so much. Either way no court should assume that the UK has a right to cancel.
I think there's a bigger issue here that the referendum is an instruction to parliament, not the executive. Parliament should have set policy then instructed the executive to start work. We have a very evil tail wagging the dog right now, without a clear mandate and deliberately avoiding seeking one, taking advice or asking the public what brexit actually means.
"That in all probability will trigger a general election"
More immediately parliament now has influence to insist on a more considered, saner negotiation plan, instead of leaving it in the hands of extremists in secret meetings. If May and the 3 brexiteers don't play ball parliament could probably get away with rejecting their plan and requiring amendments at least once before going nuclear with an election.
They aren't going to veto brexit but now have the chance to push for a genuine 'good deal' instead of the 'worstest deal possible' we're currently being dragged towards by extremists.
" German CBI has already gone on record as saying that "it's a political issue"
More importantly the German car workers agreed. They want trade to continue but the want the basic principles of Europe maintained more. The brexiteers seem incapable of believing money can be a secondary issue, despite complaining about the EU morphing into a poltical union they can't understand why anyone inside would make a political decision and sideline raw greed.
So we're doomed to see them continue to claim a deal is possible right up to the point they're offered an all or nothing choice :(
More than half the Android devices I've owned had 3rd party app stores (sometimes more than 1) preinstalled. None of those stores got any use after a quick trial. The Orange OSF had it's own mail, maps, store and I forget what else, all instantly disabled.
People have this dream that replacing the Google framework and apps will make them irresistible to customers and wildly rich as a result. Most customers neither care or find the replacement efforts worthy. The minority that do want to avoid Google, install CyanogenMod and choose their own apps.
CM are free to try what Amazon, Sony (3 fscking store apps on my Xperia), most Chinese phones, every carrier and most OEMs have failed to achieve but it won't save their business because there are more blowhards pretending they hate Google than actual customers prepared to do something about it.
The whole premise fails on Andrews mischaracterisation of what CyanogenMod is: it's not an attempt to excise Google or it's apps (though that's an option for those that want it), it's about improving Android, filling the support gap left by device vendors, about all the things that make OSS fun to work on. There's a loosely symbiotic relationship with Google and the flow is both ways.
It's not clear how much value Cyanogen adds to that. Partnered with hardware manufacturers it would have better (any) access to drivers than the OSS version but if OEMs actually cared that would happen for CyanogenMod. They're failing because they don't offer much over the free versions and have behaved like dicks to far too many people, all in the pursuit of cash.
There's nothing the UK could do to stop the EU offering very low barriers to desirable UK workers
Seen chatter that some German politicians are already floating the idea of brexit refugee citizenships with 0yr residency requirement. The most elite Sunderland car workers might have a future after all.
It doesn't mean you didn't do it.
Sometimes you have to try something to find out it doesn't work. It's just more catastrophic when a country tries something after being stampeded into it by loathsome media magnates, traitorous politicians putting self above country and a pissed off underclass only hearing what they want to hear.
I will be watching, not taking part.
oversupply of humanitarian graduates
Is the entirely predictably result of using higher education as a way to hide youth unemployment. STEM qualifications are hard work even for clever students, if you're trying to get 50% of youngsters off the unemployment list for a few years there have to be easier courses with little other value to the country to get them there.
That in the age of fees so many still sign up for so many soft, pointless courses shocks me.
This all presupposes it actually becomes as hard for skilled UK workers to head to the EU post brexit as the UK wants to make it for EU workers coming here.
There's nothing the UK could do to stop the EU offering very low barriers to desirable UK workers, the referendum and it's immigration spin mean the UK could not do the same without going to war with it's voters. Yet another area where the brexiteers have no leverage over the EU and could only threaten their own people to prevent it.
If that happens, there might well be higher wages for the few that remain here. Might not be many companies left though.
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