Posts by M. Poolman

Re: Black arm bands for everyone

May I be the 93rd person to point out ...

"Imagine if in the plain old telephone days that AT&T owned a share of Pizza Hut. They easily could have blocked all phone calls going to Dominos or even rerouted them to Pizza Hut."

Funnily enough, it was almost exactly that scenario that led to autoamtion of telephone exchanges in the first place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch

Amazing how what goes around comes around (with maybe a few extra clicks and beeps)

Re: Hmm

Well I've looked hard but can't see anything, go on give us another clue!

Re: Ch-Ch-Changes

You sure do live up to your name bombastic bob!

Re: Turtlenecks, boybeards...

The Bible also mentions people living hundreds of years - like Methuselah at 956 years.

New testamant, written mainly in Latin and Greek: 3 score + 10 or if you're lucky 4 score.

Old testamant, written in ancient Hebrew: 956 for Methusala etc. Almost certainly mistranslation/misunderstanding by translaters whose knowledge of Latin and Greek was better than Hebrew.

Re: And the best Retro bit is...?

" All Linux is "PROPER"!

Unless it's been infected with systemd that is... "

Yes of course, absolutely, have a thumbs up. It's something that I tend subconciously blank out and hope it will one day go away.

Re: Eh? "it has his National Insurance number on it"

Erm, I think you'll find that HR and/or payroll very likely know your NI number already (how else does your NI get paid?).

Re: really?

Beat me to it!

Dimensions of proteins are at the nm level, human hair is about 100 um: a difference in scale about 10^5! C'mon el Reg. we expect better of you!

Obviously this is very much "Oh god think of the children!" territory, buuut...

I don't think that's an unreasonable point of view.

Firstly the technical difficulty doesn't absolve the big social media players from all responsibility for what is put out on their systems. In any event, solving difficult technical problems is supposed to be their forte.

I'm also not entirely convinced about the level of difficulty involved (although IANAE): YT and FB both have "no pron" policies, and it's hard to find much on those platforms (or so I'm told).

Re: Execution speed...

@ BeakUpBottom (At some point ...)

That is an example of the social problem I mentioned. When I teach short course to non-programmers (for very secific tasks), the first thing I say is along the lines of "you will be learning to use a programming language, but this is NOT going to turn you into programmers" (and repeat several times thereafter!)

Re: Re. storms (can hurricanes be diverted)

DDT applied to that bloody butterfly?

Re: 2017 Year of the Linux Desktop

Do any come with a choice of systemd or not ?

I don't know, but Qt based desktops might well make it easier to get away from systemd. Gnome depends on it but Qt doesnt (iirc),

Re: Conservatives + DUP = IRA?

It's not all the nasty foreigners that means a hard brexit will lead to a hard border, it's smuggling. If there's a difference between tax regimes between NI and Eire, then the one or other govt will have to prevent tax avoidance by imposing import duties. People not wanting to pay them (or see a lucrative opportunity selling duty-free imports on the other side of the border) will simply avoid the official border posts, if the soft border remains.

A hard border was a massive bone of contention in the bad old days and did a lot to fuel the violence. Please don't let's go back there.

Re: A week is a long time in politics

Well yes, it has happened many times before, but the UK aviation industry in 1945 had been driven by, thankfully, unusual circumstances for the preceding 6 years.

And another thing

Photography by the moonlight of Charon?!

Awesome, maximum respec !

Re: Fail Safe?

May I suggest

if ( statements = contradictory ) then

System.Alarm := True

if not airborne then

Engine.Active := False;

endif ;

endif:

if ( fire_status = burning ) then

System.FireAlarm := True

if airborne then

AskPilotWhatToDo(InCaseOf = EngineFire) ;

endif;

endif;

Re: Que? @ Martin Gregorie

Spot on! I was going to post pretty much the same. I've been lucky enough travel to India as part of my job over several years and the impressions I get of the legacy of the British Empire is pretty much the same as yours.

Many aspects of the Indian system are directly modeled on those of the UK, and the fact that these were retained after independence says it all.

You could also mentioned the educations system!

Re: Why use tampons?

Sea water analysis is done microbiologically, which takes several days and can't be done in the field. This sounds like a quick, convenient and cheap alternative, although probably not very quantitative.

Re: Content and Style

LaTeX + subversion does the trick for me. Both have a steep learning curve, but once you're past it all the problems associated with pinging word processor files between machines and co authors is a thing of the past.

Some enlightened publishers even supply the appropriate LaTeX style file, what more could you ask for?

Re: I Wonder @ OP

Just what I was going to say but you got there first.

I've had thinkpads for years now and always been satisfied with them. First thing I do is zap any preinstalled OS and stick Linux (other operating systems are available).

Scylla and Charybdis

That's a bit high-brow for a red top news site!

Re: I know what I like

Have an upvote from another old Genesis fan!

Re: Trolls

Yeah,

Trolls are a big thing in Iceland, which by a funny coincidence is also host to the worlds only Phallological museum (http://phallus.is)

In the interest of fairness

I should make clear that the BBC report I heard didn't actually mention Ebola, but the breathless excitement with which they described the (potential) impact of the "shellshock virus" might lead one to think that the two were comparable.

Re: A little help required from somebody with a better memory ...

Multiple work spaces (or screens - the concept was pretty similar) were built in, not a third party add-on, at least on the later (A1200ish) amiga models. I seem to remember that it wasn't as easy to jump between as it was on various *nix systems that followed.

Re: Don't think we need a spare planet Earth (@ NomNomNom @ AC)

"If the hypothesis is that increase in atmospheric CO2 causes increase in temperature (the Anthropogenic Global Warming Hypothesis) and temperature fails to increase (over 17 years) despite a continuing increase in CO2, then the hypothesis is falsified*."

No, because you won't know what would have happened had CO2 remained constant. This is one reason why there's so much interest in modelling.

The fact that it's not testable is absolutely not to refute or support the notion. Personally I think that not turning as much fossil carbon into CO2 as quickly as possible is a rather sensible idea.

Re: Guns won't work, so let's look at alternatives...

The new Robot Wars - in glorious 3D !

(seriously beeb, have a think about it)

Re: I happen to have experience transporting radioactive material across international borders.

I had a couple of those key-rings, both now sadly defunct. Could El Reg do them again ?

@zmodem

Yes, very good. Now go and find some water melons to explode, the grownups are talking.

Re: Another example of why Linux fails to gain market share

'Ubuntu is the leader, so everyone please just promote that, even if it's not "best", to try to win some market share, and don't let the zealots and purists and FOSS radicals define the entire movement.'

Ubuntu depends on Debian, by "winning" - as in destroying all competitors, it would be effectively destroying it's own life support. Having said that, I'd certainly recommend Ubuntu to anyone wanting to dip a toe in the water.

Nonetheless FOSS is a bit of an oddity, inasmuch as there is lot of mutual interdependence between players that in other spheres would be seen as rivals: talking about a a distro as being "leader" really doesn't make a lot of sense.