Posts by Frederic Bloggs
121 posts • joined Tuesday 17th August 2010 07:38 GMT
George 3 for me!
Re: Disclaimer
Although the cynic in me would say that say that "assume the opposite of any Met Office pronouncement on long term weather" probably stands a better than chance probability of being near.
Disclaimer
"Past climate and weather is no guide to the conditions in the future"
Re: 5Gb seems very large
Password cracking rainbow tables?
Re: No you choose your degree at 13
Many of the best programmers (as opposed to computer scientists) I know are music, essay writing arts or (intriguingly) chemistry graduates. Arguably, some of the worst were maths graduates.
This has nothing to do with intelligence or knowledge. Let's face it squarely: at the end of the day a talented programmer can structure and design a reasonable system in his (sadly yes) head while you wait. He then has to spend the next three to six months writing it down. That's a bloody long (and very *precise*) essay/dissertation by anyone's standards. And he has to do that year in, year out, during his programming career.
Programming is craft, not science. It is more akin to carpentry with book authorship than abstract maths.
Pascal had a use (for me at least)
"Algorithms + Data Structures" by Nikki Wirth was probably the most influential book on programming I ever read. It caused me to change from Algol to Pascal (and later avoid Pascal 68/Simula etc) as my high level language. Anything was better than Fortran and (spit) Basic. Mind you I was still writing a load of machine code, assembler and Plasyd at the same time. So when I came across unix and C in 1981 I was ready for the change. I have been writing in C ever since. I have never understood why people think it is so hard to use.
Caveat: I started computing ten years before you.
Good article.
Pigs Blood
I am old enough to think that I remember a big scandal thrown up 10s of years ago, because it was discovered that the "non-milk protein" and also some "non-milk fat" in ice cream was being derived from animal by products such as pig's blood.
They do say that people that don't study history are destined to repeat it ...
But hang on a minute...
If one wishes to surf anything that Vodafone deem to be "adult" (which is by no means the same as pr*n), one has to ring them up and convince the support service that you are an of age. Therefore, since this mechanism already exists, why not just extend it to ("adult"?) premium numbers?
Job's a guddun
Posted in Bitcoin prices spike on Euro woes
Re: In troubled times...
"Cyprus *had* a deposit guarantee, they just threatened to bypass it by taxing deposits. And it was the ECB who was encouraging this theft of depositor funds. The sudden interest in bitcoin is from other people in Europe wondering which other banks might decide to renege on their guarantees."
Apparently it was the IMF that were the cheer leaders. The ECB went along with it (gratefully) to spare Angela Merkel's blushes in the upcoming election in September. As she will doubtless lose that I, for one, am looking forward nervously to the resultant fall out.
Samsung S3 Android Hack
Any similarities between these UEFI problems (plus any more that no-one has found yet) and the recent revelations that Samsung's Android "customisations" have security openings the size of regular barn doors are completely coincidental.
Honest.
I did a load of work on this in 1994 and, clearly, they have some better inflection and frequency models than we did then. Also the pacing for English (and probably Polish) is much better than then. However, it's clear that the phoneme splitting and reconstruction is not always being done correctly. Which probably reflects on the language skills of the people doing this tedious and exacting work. The corpus of sentences being split may also vary quite a bit in size for each language. That will make quite a difference when doing contextual reconstruction.
Re: I like my aircraft to have metal, not glorified plastic
And let's not forget that wooden aircraft are lighter than metal ones.
Re: What was more shocking was
He's dead. You can say what you like.
Re: boo fucking hoo
Sorry, we are fresh out of fetid horse. They are currently being processed and used for other purposes.
Got some nice fresh roadkill you could use instead - how about a slightly battered dead badger?
Tap, tap... Er hello?
This is late December and not (very) early April isn't it?
It's not just Optus
There is now a general trend for various radio comms manufacturing companies to virtualise for power consumption, cabinet real estate, capacity and possible "cloudy" extensions in the future.
Traditionally a major node in such radio infrastructure consists of one processor box (of varying no of U heights) per function. And there are many functions. This results in a major node consisting of several 19" cabinets, consuming lots of power and space.
I have seen some nodes out there being testing where every function is virtualised and the whole lot now fits into half a cabinet's worth of processor boxes. This means, amongst other things, that a major node could be plonked just about anywhere, possibly using just ambient cooling. One could contemplate having many more of them because, in time, they will become significantly cheaper both in hardware and space rental cost.
Optus may be the first mobile carrier to break cover, but you can bet that all the other majors are in there testing right now.
Which is the bit that they claim is novel?
Do you suppose it is sticking a headset into a mobile phone? Is it the headset? The earpiece or the fact that you (may) need two plugs? I am confused. Clearly people have been using plugin headsets / earpieces in radio transceivers for decades. One standard for aircraft even has twin plugs (one 1/4" and one slightly smaller) for headsets and has had since (IIRC) the war.
Re: The good old days...
The correct answer is 0 (zero) FLOPS. The machine is fixed point. All the calculations that involve digits after the decimal point would have had to have dealt with the old fashioned integer way.
Re: Can someone help me here?
But on the east coast the drought that had persisted for, I think, 7 years has well and truly broken, with full reservoirs, extensive flooding etc etc.
Can someone help me here?
As an engineer and non-climate scientist, I am having some difficulty understanding how it is that increasing temperatures will cause drought in a world whose surface is predominantly water.
As far as I can see increasing temperature -> increased evaporation from the seas -> more water content in the atmosphere -> more "weather" (as it is the latent heat of water that largely drives "weather") -> more wind -> more storms -> more rain (albeit in forms that one might not want or like) because land conditions (temperature, air pressure, geography etc) varies over a much greater range than that of the sea.
Paleolithic evidence seems to suggest that the earth has been much hotter than now and that coincided with extensive *rain* forest, other plants and animal growth. Maybe we are burning the results to move current conditions toward those pertaining then - but it's probably not a very efficient method.
Perhaps we should try harder?
Er..
Is it just me or is this just a very, very small - but above all a - *mechanical* relay?
Posted in What's new in Windows Server 2012
Re: 1970 called, they want their OS back (nearer 1965)
While we in "plus ca change" mode, can I put in a reminder that the George 3 filestore design used exactly the same block write mechanism - for the same reason. Whatever next? Ordered metadata writing? Are they going to get a patent for it?
Having looked at the website, that may be one of the 'pico switches'. But the article seems to imply otherwise - to me at least.
radiation resistance / efficiency etc
I know we are all moving up to 2+Ghz for 4G but even there, the radiation resistance of something that small is going to be tiny. As for 800/900 Mhz, I am struggling to understand how it is going to produce any power at that size.
Posted in iOS 6 maps can't find Sydney Apple Store
Pedant's Corner
IANANOS, but I can read street maps. If I am reading the one provided correctly, Apple thinks its store is on Kent Street, not George Street. Which, BTW, is even more west (to the left of) George Street than the location in the article.
I have my coat on, as it is nissing down here at the moment.
Re: Bono Related Charity?
I wonder who that reminds me of...
Re: So copying^Hbeing inspired by something is OK then?
Note the extra words after "copying" viz: "design ideas".
Clearly Mr Job's iXXXX is not yet a Leica Rangefinder Camera. Although that may change. I suspect Leica would ignore any Applely Flavoured Products unless and until any iLeica starts to command the same price premium.
So copying^Hbeing inspired by something is OK then?
Thus Steve Jobs is allowed to copy design ideas by someone else, but no-one is allowed to do the same for his stuff?
Which one of these icons is the one for rank hypocrisy?
I'm confused
What I can't get my head around is that there is US case law that says that a UI is not patentable, the functionality of that UI can be copied (M$ v Apple many years ago). There was the recent Java bust up between Google and Oracle which ruled that a clean room reimplementation is not copying. All Samsung products are clearly marked as Samsung and not Apple products and run different operating systems anyway - I notice that Apple did not do Samsung for "passing off". They don't even work alike, the UIs are not the same (albeit some of the differences are small).
Help me out here someone.
Re: Not as cheap as it sounds
You mean you *don't* encrypt the data before you store it in the "cloud"?
Really???
Re: I was one once
Sadly, that means you aren't anonymous Tony.
Anyway can't you just get it back? I thought passing the exams lasted for life? They do here in the UK.
Cough...
As a fully qualified (potentially) bearded nerd that does this sort of thing, they are QSL "cards" not "codes". There simply aren't enough Q "codes" to collect ("QSL" being one of them). What lot of QRN the final part of that article is!
Posted in BBC mulls seizing the wheel of Local TV
And those of us that have to deal with Arqiva have a constant battle with the speel chekker to persuade it to accept the correct spuelllling.
Linux bug? Really?
We have linux boxes of various ages (some more than 5 years old) in some fairly critical places running messaging software with NTP direct from gps hardware. They all simply carried on working perfectly happily. Mind you all the apps are written in boringly old fashioned C.
Java? I've heard of it.
Re: Go backwards
chains would work well here
Re: A-Max
The USP is probably that being essential hollow points they mushroom on hitting the target; so making a bigger hole; so being more likely to "clip the line" if one's aim is slightly off. Good luck with that. Pity there is no ASA in the US of A to say: "prove they work". I suspect that NRA would ban them if they did.
Posted in Netherlands jumps off ACTA train
The House of Representatives, D66, ?
Erm.. Much as D66 (a smallish, but admittedly vociferous, party) would like to be "the House of Representatives", it isn't. Neither is it part of the the Cabinet (which is to say "the Government"*)
In any case "the Government"* has resigned; is now in caretaker mode ahead of the elections and is in no position to sign anything.
* it's not (anything) like the UK system.
Missed the real point
The more scientifically and numerically literate one is, the more one can see just how ignorant and generally bereft of ideas or principles both the press and their bosom pals the politicians are. Hence all the fuss about pasties and static caravans.
Re: To quote Gandpa Simpson
40 rods = 1 furlong per 48, 54 or 63 gallons, depending on which sort of hogshead you are storing your fuel in (ale/beer/wine respectively). That is spectacularly crap consumption, even for a merkin gas guzzler. Or even an Abrams tank.
I'll get my coat. I clearly need to get out more.
Posted in Does Britain really need a space port?
And then there is the weather
One of the things that stops rocket launching is not being able to see the blasted thing on the pad / runway. The weather is just so much less cloudy/foggy/windy/crap in the desert. This isn't going to change here in the UK anytime soon. With or without the government declaring a drought.
Re: And once you have desalinated this water at sea level ...
Has any considered the up side of all these leaks at all?
Bear in mind that the UK is heavily reliant on aquifers and that, during warmer months water does not translocate from the surface into said aquifers, therefore leaks have the side effect of replenishing the aquifer more efficiently than rain. And more quicker as the leaky pipes are generally a bit nearer as well!
Pity that someone has spent a load of energy cleaning it first, but at least one can't complain that it's going to pollute anything.
Er... I think you will find that the amount of water quoted is the number of litres in total to grow, process and transport the beans, as well as produce yer actual cup of coffee. If one simply accounts for the actual water in the cup, the cost is several orders of magnitude smaller than Lewis quotes.
Even in a Grande.
Have they fixed the XP printer bug yet?
This would be the same Kaspersky that can't be bothered to explain or fix the problem of printing on XP with their last release? The one that means that in order to print, one has to disable the anti-virus first, print and then enable it again?
Hemlock
Reliable, available, cheap, good historical precedent etc. The perp can choose, life with no parole or suicide.
Simples.
Posted in Stray SMS leads to aborted landing
Re: Why can't they...
They have, sort of.
Many new light aircraft designs have built in "ballistic parachute recovery systems". Essentially, one gets into trouble, pulls "the handle", out pops a parachute and the whole caboodle floats fairly gently to earth. To date the market leader can provide such systems for aircraft weighing up to ~3.5 tonnes.
Just ask them to scale it up a bit :-)
Mind you, it would require rather more than the 500ft that they had to recover in this incident.
Posted in Life on Mars found – in 1976
Re: Tasty
And as any fule kno, million to one shots come up nine time out of ten.
Re: So it's business as usual
That'll be the drought we had here in the south of England yesterday then... We had an inch of rain with (apparently) more to come this week. Weather is chaotic, trends will change over time and venting 100's of tonnes of methane per day from a (no longer) capped well won't help either. Get over it.
But, on a serious note, if temperatures increase, then the atmosphere will hold more moisture. Moisture and what happens to as it is blown about, drives weather. More moisture = more weather and, BTW, more chaotic behaviour. Having said that, what is sucked up, must come down again somewhere, so overall there will be more precipitation. One wonders whether anyone is watching historical rainfall data?
Orange
One of the USPs that Orange trumpeted for the first few years of their existence was "0800 numbers are free" and they were. I don't know when that changed, but it clearly has now.
What I don't understand is why an 0800 number (which the recipient pays for) should cost more than a geographic number.
