Posts by Geoff Campbell 1878 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jun 2008
The marginal rates on offer (as per the $2/kWh quoted in the article) make the slightly shortened battery life very much financially worthwhile. And it is only a slight shortening - most V2G trials I have seen only use something like 10% of the total battery capacity, rather than a full discharge/charge cycle, so degradation is minimal.
GJC
As I understand it, the CCS standard doesn't currently allow for V2G, and all the trials I have heard of use the Nissan LEAF with its CHAdeMO connector.
Over here in Europe, by the way, Teslas have been using CCS since the advent of the Models 3 & Y, and the older Models S & X can be retro-fitted to support CCS with a small(ish) adapter.
GJC
OK. I have to say I have absolutely no idea where you're coming from on this one, so I shall not pursue it further.
If you want to make out that this is because I am somehow unconsciously racist, misogynistic, or in any other way down on some subsection of my fellow humans, I'm afraid I shall have to laugh at you, loudly.
GJC
Depends on the source of the sound, I guess. Sound waves from a relatively distant radio would probably have a different effect to sound waves from the internal laptop speakers. Which perhaps also accounts for why it was only certain models - positioning and size of the internal speakers would also be relevant.
GJC
I have a little bit of sympathy for the US DoD investigations into paranormal methods.
I mean, we all know it's all a complete crock of shit, but those were simpler times, and no doubt the money spent on the research was a tiny, tiny fraction of their annual paperclip bundle, so why not?
GJC
Yes, there is further. The methane heats the atmosphere while it exists. Once it has oxidised into CO2, that CO2 carries on heating the atmosphere, adding further heat into the system.
You say "additive", I say "further". Same thing. Are you one of these that refuses to agree with something unless you first re-phrase it in your own words, in order to look like you've won?
GJC
The problem with saying that "methane gets oxidised", is that the process of oxidising methane produces water vapour (no problem, although it is a greenhouse gas it will fall as rain) plus CO2. So once the methane has done its damage heating the atmosphere, it degrades into CO2 which carries on heating the atmosphere further.
GJC
You're right, it's very much not smart. But it ain't Microsoft that were being dumb.
He could have gone into File Explorer, and copied the files in any manner he fancied from there, just as if they were on the local disk. "File Explorer", you see? The clue's in the name?
The web interface into OneDrive used to be pretty clunky, simply because it's just not needed. It's a lot better now, but still completely unnecessary in most cases - I use it occasionally to archive project stuff from customer's machines that can't be logged into my Microsoft account directly.
GJC
I have the App in front of me now. It does not have permissions to the address book.
I use it because it makes life very easy, and I get free coffee. I can walk in, sit at a table, order, and have the food brought to me. Saves all that tedious queuing and waving credit cards around.
GJC
Thing is, this looks like the ordering system has gone rogue and sent out a receipt for a null order. So this email template is the one you would receive if you had placed an order, so an "unsubscribe" link would make no sense.
Cock-up rather than conspiracy, I'm going to bet. But then, it normally is.
GJC
Windows Phone was a beautiful OS, I too was distraught when it was ditched. Microsoft have made so many bad choices around the evolution of Windows Core/CShell/etc., when they were so close to getting it right.
I've got a Surface Duo in front of me now. Absolutely beautiful piece of engineering, it's a really nice device with Android on. With a modern version of Windows Phone, it would be a great device, albeit perhaps a bit too expensive.
Oh, well...
GJC
That's nothing to do with the proliferation of messages.
I started out in the '80s, programming single-task applications on PCs. The sort of thing where a company would buy a PC, a printer, and our software, stick it on a desk, and use it for that one task, you know? Running DOS, so the computer booted up, automatically loaded our application, and did *absolutely* nothing else.
Any error message that came up was definitely and absolutely an error, and came with a summary text and a warning that we would want to know what the text said.
Did the users make a note of it before dismissing it? Did they fuck.
GJC
Pathworks (and PCSA before that) was a great system. Worked a lot better once we got the memory management stuff fully sorted so it could co-exist with other network drivers.
They were happy days, and a much simpler time. I lost track of the number of hard drives I replaced in VAXmates, and selling the special VT-compatible PC keyboards to banks and dealing houses to replace the ones that got stuff spilled on them during games of office rugby or cricket was a constant source of income for us.
I think perhaps I might have worked with you at some point, I was at Network Connection Ltd. around 1987-1994 sort of era, we were (or considered ourselves to be, at least) one of the leading third party PC-VAX integration houses in the UK.
GJC
I had a few experiences with the Amstrads, both 1512 and 1640. They were dreadful pieces of rubbish, a moderately decent technical spec let right down by rubbish engineering. The cases rattled and buzzed constantly, as soon as you fixed one irritating background noise, another one popped up.
GJC
Whilst you're quite right logically, in practice you're very wrong.
Even if we create a self-driving car that results in the number of deaths on the road falling to 10% of the current number, the press and certain politicians will be all over them, demanding justice and action. And the lawyers will make out like bandits.
GJC
Yes, indeed.
Actually, having had to deal with a similar situation myself, I'd say this has all the hallmarks of an employee suffering some sort of breakdown, and a boss having to find a way to give them space to get sorted out without tripping over the various clauses of the disability legislation.
But that may well be extrapolating too far on the available data. We'll see how it plays out.
GJC
I'm currently rather enjoying Craig Alanson's "Expeditionary Force" series of books, mostly because the super-intelligent alien AI is extremely believably written and developed. It's a bit of a jerk, lacks social graces, misunderstands motivations, and generally does all the things one would expect of an AI with no experience of being human.
GJC
I wonder if the backers of this have done their homework?
Phase 2 of Starlink will be going live shortly, that's the bit where the satellites use frickin' lasers to make inter-continental latencies rather lower than can be achieved by terrestrial fibre (because the speed of light in a vacuum is much faster than the speed of light in optical fibre).
Sure, the satellite systems aren't so good for really big bulk data transfers that fibre can handle well, but those don't tend to be latency sensitive, so they can go via the established routes.
Still, more connectivity is always good, so good luck to them.
GJC
What business is it of Apple what software runs on their devices after they have been sold?
I mean, sure, I wish for NSO Group to die in a collective ditch, along with all similar parasites. But I am rather uncomfortable with the concept that a device manufacturer has any sort of legal path to mandate what can or cannot be run on a device that they have sold.
I think this is one of those cases where I fervently wish that both sides could lose.
GJC
Um, I do. I *like* Windows.
OK, part of that is 34 years of familiarity, but it has rarely done anything too nasty to me, and I don't have to justify my choice if, say, a report I write can't be opened on a customer's machine. Partly because it's never happened, but mostly because saying "I'm using the latest version of MS Office on Windows" closes down any "your system isn't standard" accusations.
I have plenty of experience of Linux on desktop and server (there are a couple of Linux machines and probably half a dozen VMs within arm-reach of me now) and also of OSX/MacOS/whatever it's called this week, and they're all good. But none of them are as good as Windows, for me and my usage.
No doubt this will receive plenty of downvotes. Odd, isn't it?
GJC
I'm not buying it, I have to say. Even millions of satellites on the surface of a sphere over 13,000km in diameter is not going to get even close to the sorts of densities you are talking about, and at the moment we are talking about tens of thousands, not millions. But, OK, we'll see.
The bottom line is simply that LEO is such a useful place, that it is going to become rather busy, one way or another, so we'd better start planning for that. Me, I'd rather like to see the Milky Way from an orbital platform, and for that to happen, Low- and Mid-Earth Orbit is going to have to become a routine place to visit, just like an extension of our planet.
GJC
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