Posts by John Brown (no body) 25427 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"I actually bought a can opener whose principle was unknown to me until I saw this excellent video and it works astonishingly well."
Well, that's 20 minutes of my life I'll never get back. TWENTY whole MINUTES about a tin opener FFS! But it was weirdly and strangely fascinating. Somehow, I feel cheated and satisfied at the same time. You git!!
"I don't think they'd like the smell."
Clearly you are not a cat person. They tend to like the most foul smelling cat-foods and turn their noses up at the one we think smells almost passable. Mine like a bit of fish, chicken or even "gourmet" cat food now and then, but much prefer the foul smelling, cheap stuff as their daily "go to".
"Ever notice that there are no vegan ecosystems on Earth? "
True. On the other hand, predator/prey ecosystems are usually self-balancing. If the predators grow too numerous and eat too much of the prey, the predators starve and die back and the prey species recovers. That part of it doesn't really happen where humans are the predator. Famine due to "over preying" or other reasons in one part of the world means we ship food and humanitarian aid from other bits of the world to maintain the numbers of predators.
"if it doesn’t work it’s because I skipped too fast through the manual."
I'm of a mindset that likes to check through the instructions first, lay out all the parts then follow the instructions through step-by-step.
Brother-in-Law is the type who just dives in with a "suck it and see" attitude.
He asked me to come help build and install the new 3-door Ikea sliding wardrobe system he'd bought.
Lets just say I had two of the new sliding wardrobe doors up and working while he was still trying to take apart the one he'd managed to sort of assemble, but this time putting all the right parts on in the right places and order, ideally with no bits left over this time. :-)
He still thinks he knows what he's doing and that his way is better.
On the other hand, what is it actually doing that's useful? Id the instructions are well done in the first place, then who needs it? If the instructions are badly done, then is the solution really to spend a fortune creating an AI to turn them into something people can follow instead of just sacking the instruction creators and employing someone capable of doing the job properly in the first place?
On the other hand, as a learning experience for an AI system that might be used for something else, then yes, it might be useful in that, at least as far as Lego or even Minecraft, it can then go and test it's results and refine them.
"Well the instructions were written by humans , so .."
Yes, self-assembly furniture instructions can vary wildly from easy-to-follow through to who-the-fuck-drew-these-pictures-a-5-year-old?
Saving money by avoiding having proper technical writers creating instructions and good translators localising them by switching to hieroglyphics was a huge step backwards. Who wants to put money on someone deciding emojiis will be the next disruptive step in instruction "writing"?
To quote my Physics teacher from 40 years ago: "Units, units, you nits"
Exactly. Why are they using Kg for the mass? When the numbers get bigger, you switch the prefix up. Have they never heard of tonnes? Or is it just that 100,000Kg has a bigger impact on the public than the identical but more correct 1000 tonnes?
I'm a millionaire in PR terms. I have well over a million pennies in the bank!
"There's a linkage there to William Gibson's SF novel The Peripheral, if you need something to read."
Or watch the TV series :-)
Production finished last November, no idea where they are up to in post-prod but it's expected on Amazon Prime (or your favourite alternate source) sometime this year.
Considering it was an almost continuous job before, the new coating appears to have lasted about 10 years so far. There are, apparently, some areas which may need patching, bit nothing approaching a full re-paint job. Most likely it's some areas that may not have been prepped properly and according to one article I read, some flaking requiring a touch-up is to be expected.
"Maybe we should consider to reduce the influx of plastic garbage and prevent the problem instead of trying to solve a problem that persists because of our collective stupidity?"
That's a great idea, and most of the more advanced economies have already taken action, at least with regard to gross/larger items such as plastic bags floating down rivers. In some parts of the 3rd world however, it's a very very different story for many reasons, not least of which, money, or lack thereof. Now, I know that people will use the most striking image possible to raise awareness, but when you've seen multiple photos of multiple rivers in multiple countries choked with plastic waste flowing down to the sea, it can get a bit depressing.
See subject. That sounds like PR spin for "we will no longer have a space station where we can do more new experiments".
Why would we ever need a "decade of results"? Surely there's enough people to analyse the data and results while others can be busy coming up with new stuff to try. It could even be the same people creating experiments, gathering the data then spending time working with their own data and results, sharing with others and reaching conclusion while others take their place/space on the space station with their own experiments. Surely the boffins at NASA have figured that out by now!
Oh...wait. That IS how it works!
I would imagine the plans he'd already given away were still "open source" in that he gave them away for free and I doubt Woz placed any restrictions on them. I suppose, in an alternate universe, someone else took those free plans and built a batch of computers, sold them, and made a killing, possibly bringing Woz along for a newer iteration and something other than Apple was born. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs, ever on the lookout for opportunity, hooked up with Bill Gates and the rest is history :-)
Out of curiosity, what are the 100 year old cameras you have? Cheap and cheerful Box Brownie affairs or high end well known makes? If the latter, why those and not the cheaper ones?
I'll be more impressed if they are functional, serviceable, "unknowns" rather than from the prestigious names:-)
"Why the heck is a broken remnant like this worth that much?? Sure it's history, but is it REALLY 500k USD interesting"
Depends who you ask I suppose. Just look at the antiquities market. Or the plastic Star Wars figurine market. Or the Cindy doll market :-)
Collectors will pay a lot for what they and/or their peers/community think might be valuable. First editions always command much higher prices.
"I suppose with the low gravity, some sort of hopping robot, might be possible, but damping it so that it doesnt spring straight back out would be a challenge,"
Clearly you never saw a Moon Hopper on UFO
Mmmm, I need to go lie down in a darkened room while a dream of sexy ladies in string vest outfits with silver miniskirts.
"I wonder how stable the holes are?
I wonder that too when I read these bits from the article:
"hypothesized the pit and others like it were created by the ceiling of a collapsed cave.
“For long term colonization and exploration of the Moon, pits may provide a desirable habitat:
As the first line was from the end of one paragraph, and the second line is the start of the next paragraph, it seemed especially jarring and maybe not such a good idea.
The forged document should not be that hard to trace back to source. Even in the US, contempt of court is taken very seriously. The lawyer who presented it could be disbarred and imprisoned if responsible. If not, s/he will have no hesitation throwing someone under the bus when her/his reputation is on the line. Who presented it to the lawyer? That person is either guilty or knows who it came from, and so on down the line. Considering the threat of court action, that should concentrate some minds right back the the guilty party. Everyone in that evidence chain needs to swear in front of the judge how and where they got that letter.
"That they topped it off by sending the victim to collections really is the cherry on top of the turd."
More likely, just a lack of communication in their internal systems. That sort of thing happens all the time in many medium to large size companies. Poorly designed systems that don't take account of anything unusual.
Your first paragraph includes the word "alleged". Assuming that was alleged in court, then it came with proof and was accepted or rejected by the court, so is or is not relevant in the final outcome.
I agree with your second paragraph. The company was aware of his situation and appear to have mdae no effort whatsoever to help, thus failing miserably in their duty of care to employees.
"Charter are as responsible for this guy's crime as the Car salesman who sold Charter the van"
What if the van had faults that lead to an accident and a death? The dealer and/or the salesman could be on the hook for that. It's all down to proving who knew what and when.
Yes, they are saying that. The "value" is purchased and now owned by a person in Iran. That seems to be enough to count as "export". It's not even all that new a concept. Remember when certain US open source compression and cryptographic software was classed as "munitions" and forbidden from "export"?
"I worked in Slough for a while, it's the only place that I came across fluorescent grey as a colour."
That seems to be an ever growing popular colour for cars. I just started noticing them recently. Sort of battleship grey in a gloss that somehow manages to look matte!! The first one I noticed, I thought it was just the undercoat and it would be going back for the rest of the paint job.
...or pretty much any microcomputer before the IBM PC came along. The IBM PC was one of, if not the first mass produced computer to be pretty much unusable as a bare board with no add-ons. Yes, there were other, earlier ones eg S100 based card rack systems, but they weren't really mass produced and certainly not aimed at consumers.
"You don't have as much of this in metric but calculations are easier because of the consistency."
Fractions work with decimals, just not as conveniently in some cases. 1/3rd of a metre is a bit imprecise, but half a metre or a quarter metre works fine. Just that almost no one uses them. On the other hand, half a litre is a common usage in speech, but always labelled in print as 0.5l. The usual argument trotted out is "yeah but 12" foot can easily and conveniently be spit into 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/8 etc, etc, etc.". My response is if you are working with those sorts of fractions, then millimetres will get you where you need to be just as easily. You might not be able to convert precisely between, say 1/3rd" and mm, but so what? If you'll be using metric, then you'll measure 8mm because 1/3" isn't what you want. You want something about that size, ie something that will fit into the other part of the same size, ie 8mm. If you need more significant figures, it's just as easy to drill a hole 8.4 or 8.46mm if you need that level of accuracy, but again, there is no need to mix different measuring scales. The only people with problems are those thinking in the old scale and converting in their head to the new scale. All of us above an age have been through that. Some of us still do for some things. I still do my height in feet/inches and my weight in St/lbs (none of this US lbs only malarky!)
"The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated."
Sir PTerry was mis-quoting for humorous effect. The process of converting en masse was going to be expensive and complicated. Not the actual usage, once that giant step was taken.
"If you can't do F - 30 divide by 2 in a couple of seconds then you are Jacob Rees Mogg AICMFP"
Using that same logic (but using the correct numbers) surely it makes more sense to use the units the entire world uses and leave it the USA to convert to F if they choose to be the outliers.
"as I'm up late working."
Thank you :-)
Question though. Is El Reg becoming more US based? I've noticed over recent months that there are fewer new stories published in the morning UK time than there used to be and more new stories still appearing late into the evening UK time which used to be quite rare. Is El Reg scheduling more stuff around USA time these days or are more of the authors in the US office now? Is this a result of the last ownership change?
"Seems like an ok core for a hand built router/gateway/firewall."
The moment I read "two Ethernet ports", that thought flashed through my mind. I'd quite like something much smaller as my router/gateway/firewall but it seems most solutions are either fiddly (single Ethernet + a USB adaptor) or just expensive enough that I keep putting it off since the old PC with one onboard NIC and PCI NIC is doing just fine.
"The DoE loan"
Loan. So there will be a repayment plan, probably with interest. I doubt even the Tesla accountants will be able to claim no profits and have the loan written off. Although being a government loan, the interest and repayments plans will be very generous and long term. But then that's the point of government seed loans.
Interesting. Not the only ones in the UK though. I was interested in the multiple references to on-shore, local etc and wonder where their raw materials come from. Are they actually manufacturing or are they assembling? "Made in the UK"[1] is a very grey area at the best of times in this global market and supply chain.
[1] The Made in the UK sticker we used to see on products was rarely ever true in the way "the man on the Clapham Omnibus" might have assumed.
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