Posts by Geoff Campbell

Re: Good enough

Yup. I'm typing this on a PC with a 12th-gen i9, 64GB of RAM, and an NVMe SSD on the motherboard. Which mostly gets used to access websites and do simple Office applications work.

I'll be replacing it next year, probably with something ARM-based, but the reality is that it is *massively* over-spec'ed for my usage. (And, yeah, the components will get re-purposed when it is replaced, they won't go to waste.)

GJC

Intel integrated graphics and some other stuff

I've been using Intel's on-chip graphics stuff for years in my main PC, to simplify the PC build and keep costs down. They've been more than good enough for my needs for a long time now, with any serious 3D gaming kicked off onto an XBox.

The new Snapdragon X stuff from Qualcomm is looking even better than that, with a welcome return to a nice simple CPU core. I personally think that we went down a serious dead-end as soon as we started doing things like OoOE and massively complicating the CPU core as a result. In any world that contains decent multi-threaded processing, that sort of complication just isn't needed for general-purpose computing.

GJC

Re: Re-use

No, I did not "call you names", because I'm not six years old.

GJC

Re: "I'll compile my own FF without their crap"

First they have to identify me. That's trivially easy to prevent.

GJC

Re: With 8GB of RAM...

It's only a single point of failure if you let it be a single point of failure. I run a business that relies on working Internet connectivity, so I have two 100% diversely-routed Internet services. Simple, really.

GJC

That's the problem with yer modern Blood-Beasts. They've gone all soft and Politically Correct on us.

GJC

Buggering about with commands

I set up a new Linux box recently, only to discover that ifconfig, which I've used for perhaps, I dunno, 30 years, had disappeared. I got quite grumpy.

GJC

"Time will tell"

<checks watch>

That's quite long enough. It's green-washing, with perhaps a side-order of subsidy-farming.

GJC

Re: poor idea, should have never got out of the testing labs

Not that much of a U-turn. Keyboard shortcuts, including the Windows key, have pretty much always been the secret to an easy, smooth working day in Windows. This is why I liked Windows 8 & 8.1 when everyone else hated it, because the keyboard shortcuts continued to work perfectly and it was a much better operating system under the covers than Windows 7.

GJC

Re: My prediction ....

Attitude does not trump physics. That nice Mx. 42656e4d203239 stated that the difference in velocity between the asteroid belt and the moon is huge, and they were quite correct.

Mining the asteroids is feasible, but it's *way* easier to transport the machinery out to the asteroid, mine and refine the materials, then transport back only the stuff you want, which will be the very rare materials that are worth the investment in propulsion to overcome that difference in velocity in either direction. Moving the entire asteroid into Earth orbit is a massive waste of energy.

GJC

Re: Love this

We now live in a solar system with more bodies populated by robots than by humans. Which is interesting.

GJC

Re: Cats and Vultures

I'm not sure that's true of commercial loans, but either way, what banks like is customers who borrow money, then pay the loan back reliably. Musk's companies have a long history of doing so.

GJC

Re: Is fabless a risk?

Yup. Key question of outsourcing - can the customer switch outsourcing suppliers easily, or at all?

If the answer is "no", don't outsource. If the answer is "yes, but...", outsource *very* carefully if you really must.

GJC

Re: Twitter^h^h^h^h^h^h^hX

I ran a CoSy instance called TWIX for a while. Sadly these days I am forbidden the sweet treat on account of being old and decaying.

GJC

When will people learn?

Pretty much the only lesson we can learn from history is that people never learn anything from history.

GJC

Re: don't forget - 2CV spark-plugs and *proper* BMWs

I understand, although I haven't experienced it myself, that one of the rear-engined Porsche models requires the engine to be removed to get to some of the spark plugs. Probably one (or more?) of the six-cylinder models, I guess.

GJC

Re: No one would ever willingly let a complete stranger read all of your mail

If it's a private internal site, keep it private and internal. Set it up on a local web server, with access for people on the internal network. Remote access via VPN if required.

GJC

Re: Tell me that Linux is never going to be a mainsteam option without telling me....etc.

RM380Z/480Z were both Z80. The 380Z ran CP/M, I'm not sure about the 480Z.

Where you *should* have picked Liam up was on his comprehension. In the late '80s, most well-spec'ed PCs did indeed have two floppy disk drives, one 5.25" the other 3.5", as we were in the change-over period to 3.5". That they also had hard disks was not covered in the original comment.

GJC

Re: Stinking Bishop

Your colleague was quite obviously on a next-level wind-up of the entire office. I take my hat off to him!

GJC

Re: Perhaps facial recognition isn't the issue

"Trust" does not mean what you apparently think it means.

If a small percentage of police officers are crooked, or incompetent, or insane, or possibly some combination of all three, then it becomes foolish to trust any police officer (and that counts double if you are female, or from an ethnic minority, or disabled, or...). Which places a responsibility on any individual police officer to demonstrate *very* early on in any interaction with the public that they are both trustworthy and competent. And I'm afraid to say, over the course of my life, I have not yet met one single police officer in an official capacity who understands this.

GJC

Re: Don't do that.

Oh, sure, at the local and corporate level, that's cool - personal choice, user/employee/child/pet safety, whatever. It was specifically ISPs and other upstream organisations making those decisions for their entire userbase that I was referring to.

GJC

Re: Off topic

I have long held the view that organisations need to stop assuming that everyone knows how to use Word Processors and Spreadsheets, and get all new joiners onto a minimum of a day of training to show the basics like style sheets, outlining, and the use of formulae.

For some weird reason, this is very rarely well received, because every knows how to use WP and Spreadsheets, right?

GJC