Posts by AndrueC

Re: Nostalgia...

Turning off the hiding of known extensions is still one of the first things I do with a new installation. Bloody stupid idea. Mind you I also always turn on single-click and accelerator underscores :)

Re: No substitute for a big battery

I have one for my old S3

Me too. The 4400maH kept my S3 going for three days with fairly light use (one hour of music playback over bluetooth+regular email checks is about all most days). Earlier this year(*) I dropped my S3 and replaced it with an S3 Neo. Now that same 4400maH battery is lasting a week between charges. Or was. The last couple of charges have only lasted six days so after two years it might finally be on the way out. Still - they are only £20 on Amazon.

(*)A memorable day. Had two job interviews. First was in Banbury. Second was Milton Keynes. Thankfully I dropped the phone after the second one otherwise getting to that might have been tricky without sat nav. But then I had to work out how to get into MK centre and find a phone shop. And I normally use an app to pay parking charges but found 40p in the centre console which was the minimum I needed. And half way between my car and the shops it started snowing. Perfect weather for man in suit and posh shoes with no grip :-/

I got the first job anyway so it all worked out well :)

In C/C++, NULL is an address like any other, it's 0. What usually happens is that you can't dereference a NULL pointer (read the value at address 0) because that address is not mapped to any RAM so the CPU throws a segmentation fault and the OS stops the program.

If only it was that simple :)

The reasons and mechanism for getting an exception varies by machine, by OS and whether or not you're talking about virtual address space, kernel address space or physical RAM address. I think you can read from address zero from user mode code on Windows, but not write to it. NB: I could be wrong there. I'm a C# developer these days so can't easily do a test.

Also NULL is not always 0. The standard for modern C++ says it should be but in older systems it can be something else.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2960496/why-is-null-0-an-illegal-memory-location-for-an-object

The whole thing is rather murky and nutty. Thankfully with languages like C# and Java it's a lot less important than it used to be.

Re: Oh come on..

They really should be ashamed of themselves for not having a current/supported operating system.

I worked in the financial industry for a while. That left me with even less faith in their IT abilities than I had before. As outside contractors we tried to do the job properly and we mostly succeeded but it was a struggle at times. Even when replacing an old, creaking and badly implemented system they were reluctant to accept our suggestions.

I can understand 'sticking with what you know' in the financial sector but when 'what you know' is a pile of crap you ought to at least consider something new.

Re: Heretics!

Is that the one who rules the depths of the underworld? Where the sole's go?

My soles go on my feet :D

Re: Can I please go back to PC-DOS?

Questions that make you go..hmmm?

Spinning off into a gravel pit? What's one of them then - some kind of primitive run-off area?

<sad smile>

I would save that in a few hours if voting for Corbyn keeps Labour out of government...

Nationalisation and a government spending spree. What's not to like?

:D

Re: A wager?

my fiver says that by then you'll see proper quality-of-service guarantees over the Internet as if it were a private WAN

Considering that almost all internet traffic goes via one or more contended links owned by more than one company at some point I also will take that bet. Even a leased line is no guarantee of successful data transmission. You might get an SLA as far as your ISP's servers but if your data leaves your ISP's network you'll struggle to enforce any particular performance.

The only way you're going to come close to a guarantee is on a true end to end dedicated link and there ain't many companies can afford that.

The public internet is one giant game of 'pass the parcel' and the fact it works at all is part of why I find it fascinating. But also why I don't see transmissions guarantees coming any time soon.

Re: Plumbing's easy.

Not when they're plastic pipes & the mice have chewed through one of them. They then move it inappropriately all over the floor.

Or when the drain under the kitchen sink keeps dropping out of its connection. I've fixed that now though. I wrapped an old mains cable around it and the pipe above.

BTW: I'm a computer programmer, not a qualified plumber :)

Re: Bluetooth can be a temperamental bugger..

I use BT headphones with my Galaxy S3 and they are a bit odd. For one thing they let me walk around most of the downstairs of my house while leaving the phone by my settee. At work they let me walk down a flight of stairs and into the kitchen which has a thick (converted barn) stone wall and part of the floor between.

But often just turning my head when I'm out walking can block the signal briefly.

Still - they mostly do a good job. Good enough for open air listening anyway.

Re: 625 lines

Wasn't there a survey a while back that reckoned less than a third of UK households sat close enough to their TV to benefit from even HD?

And anyway I know quite a few people (most actually) who don't care enough to even ensure they have selected the HD version of a simulcast channel.

Re: re: I blame the fact that they are the marketing department.

Sadly not. I work with programmers who don't understand that opening windows lets in more hot air and stops the air-con working.

That reminds me of a discussion I had once on a forum. In the UK even in summer the temperature outside usually drops a lot at night. Even if it's been in the mid 20s during the day it's likely down to the mid-teens by 10pm and often a lot colder than the upstairs rooms of a house. So - does that mean that if you're using a portable air-conditioner to cool your bedroom it's better to leave windows open so that most of the replacement(*) air comes from outside rather than coming from the rest of the house?

I think it does but one chap in that discussion was adamant that you should never allow outside air back in when cooling. He never explained why.

(*)Because a portable AC has a hose that blows hot air out of the room. That causes negative pressure which will suck air back in from somewhere.

Re: WTF?

I assume it's down to the use of a universal communications bus. In some cars the infotainment 'has' to have some communication with the critical components so that it can do things like adjust the volume according to engine RPM. For a given value of 'has' perhaps :)

Ideally they wouldn't be on the same bus. It ought to be possible to retrieve that information using a dedicated communication link that only returns a number. But of course that's an extra bit of dedicated electronic gubbins. It's likely cheaper just to stick everything on the bus and let components talk amongst themselves. Car manufacturers will do anything to shave pennies of build cost.

So unless someone can come up with a better reason then HAY ITS NEW! HAY DID WE TELL YOU ITS ALSO FREE?! I

Indeed. That's a straw man argument if ever I've heard one ;)

Re: ISP email!

I run my own email server. a Fit-PC, Windows 7 and VPOP3. It sits quietly on a shelf in my study pretty much doing it's thing without involving me. In truth it seems to spend most of its time telling spotty hacker oiks to bugger off. Legitimate email traffic is pretty rare in comparison to the flood of failed log on attempts and bounced emails.

Re: I'd like to retain a set of commercial-free TV stations

I've never got my head around the fact that you pay for subscription TV and STILL have to watch adverts!

It's because the subscription is not enough on its own. If you want advert free TV (legally) you'd be paying higher subscriptions. The industry has determined(*) what price point best suits their business model and they make up the difference through adverts.

Another way to look at it is to see the subscription as being a subsidy.

And if you don't want to watch adverts get a DVR, stop watching live TV and use the fast forward button ;)

If it's to provide world-class broadband to the entire UK - you're havin' a larf, aincha?

Depends. How funny is it that we are the 14th highest per capita internet users in the world, and that all our major economic competitors are below us?

Yeah the weather in winter can be a bit unpleasant occasionally but most of the time it's no worse than anywhere else. But I'm not trying to sell you the entire town as a place to live. I was addressing the idea that it was a bad place to go for a conference in summer.

You have excellent transport links (two train stations, and the A55 can get you to Manchester airport in less than 90 minutes). You have a large and modern conference centre. During breaks you can go outside and enjoy a very nice promenade. In the evenings more night life than you can shake a stick at and you can extend your stay by a day or two and have access to the gorgeous Conwy valley and all parts south.

Okay so you've had some kind of bad experience of the area. I feel the same way about Colwyn Bay because that was my local benefit office during the mid 80s when we lived in Rhos on Sea(*). But you should get over yourself. I wouldn't choose to live there myself (not enough employment opportunities for a programmer and as a golfer I wouldn't appreciate the winter weather) but as a venue for a conference in summer it's a very good choice.

(*)Now there's a retirement town.

So the sort of careful, thoughtful, well informed work that begot DAB, Openreach, and the UK's pathetic mobile and broadband markets?

I have no comment at this time.

:)

it is not something that feels natural to anyone. ITS AN EMERGENCY ffs.

I've always thought that the standard 'which service do you require?' doesn't help. If you in a vehicle crash and can see bodies and people trapped in wrecks and someone asks you what service you need which are you going to pick?

I know that they coordinate so 'pick any of the ones you want' ought to be enough but still, in the heat of the moment it's a somewhat confusing question.

Re: Facebook and Twitter must raise a red flag on terror activity

The assumption of course is that all terrorists are extremely stupid and will talk openly about their intentions

"The dirty man will carry the noisy dog to the park tonight."

No, seriously, he will. His name is Bob and the dog has a bad leg.

Re: the least densely populated area of Britain...

Dumfries and Galloway is pretty quiet too. I'm off to a holiday cottage just outside Newton Stewart in a fortnight. It's only a mile or so from the Kirroughtree dark sky park.

It was quite a shock the first time when I got up in the middle of the night to go to the loo and realised there was no night light for the hall. Then it became a more serious problem because I didn't remember where the light switch for the main light was nor the how many doors there were. Plus it's an L-shaped hall which added to the mystery (and the urgency).

First time in many, many years that my night adapted eyes left me totally blind.

Mine's the one with the emergency torch in the pocket :)

Re: Don't the British government have a spare range?

Why sell it now, when it's only going to get more valuable?

That didn't stop Gordon Brown selling off our gold.