Posts by Alan Brown

Re: Really?

" And there are many more flaws than just the ones you could be bothered to mention."

Separate pressure vessels and the weight penalties associated with them being the first thing that springs to mind, not to mention that in an engine-out situation a plane is still landable and pyros tend to be unreliable. On top of that, in order to make the tube capable of taking the loads in the video without bending you'd have to make it substantially stronger and therefore much heavier still. Would it get off the ground?

Even light aircraft whole-body parachute recovery systems come with penalties and haven't always saved lives

Re: Retire parachutes?

> Somehow I wouldn't want to sign the order for 'No, we don't need backup 'chutes any more, our retros are 100% reliable."

You won't need to. Chutes are part of the design as last-ditch backups (retros are used for manouvering, so if they don't work you have enough warning to deploy chutes) and for launch escape use (retros used as an escape rocket until fuel-out, capsule comes down under chutes)

"Really, those things should only ever be put in a very low orbit so they will de-orbit all by themselves in a couple of years at most."

They are.

The ones in higher orbits have much tougher requirements.

Whilst cubesats were originally intended to allow low cost, low orbit, short duration (before burnup) proof-of-concept missions, the form factor and increasing reliability/miniaturisation of space-rated parts means they're a useful tool for higher orbit work.

Higher orbit devices tend to be fitted with ion thrusters to ensure they can be deorbited at end of mission.

Re: The thing is...

"The lead locks in by clamping to the earth pin until the red tab is pulled."

These only prevent the cable being pulled out of the back of the computer. They don't do much about the 13A plug end (that link is hideously overpriced too)

Re: Leeches

Instead of opting out, all you need to do is use your own router.

Re: Would love a Defender

> I think you'll find that sooner or later the Defender will be built again

I doubt TATA will find sufficient buyers. Airbag and emissions rules are worldwide, not just USA/EU and the Defender can't pass crashtesting rules anyway (it's been grandfathered up to now, but rebasing the production would negate that)

Re: WalkWalk

"They may try a doorstop settlement (letting it go all the way until the day in court),"

They have been.

The danger with that approach is that if the plaintiff wants to, he can insist on getting into court and getting a decision, which given the ICO report is highly likely to go against TT and thereby set guidelines for future cases.

Re: Only three?

After posting the original comment, a thought occurred to me.

It is entirely possible that the three concerned "just so happen" to be union organisers or similar.

It's an easy way to throw them under a bus and ensure others don't try to step into their shoes.

"So we're in a race to the cellar for cost/compute and watts/compute."

Until 4 years ago I would have said that _anything_ would outclass x86 on the latter, but Intel has been rolling out a continuous set of surprises.

That said, the x86 instruction set is a bloody mess and walking to a clean sheet design would help a lot in terms of going forward. The thing which stops us buying ARM is more inertia (and availability) than actual requirements for binary compatibility (as long as I can put RHEL on them, I'm good to go)

Re: "..for another 300 years or so.."

"In reality the risk from the radiation is small"

EXACTLY.

There's a bigger risk of chemical poisioning from uranium or plutonium than from any kind of radioactives around any functioning nuclear plant (or one being decommissioned)

Re: Computer infections

"It really gets me to see standard office desktops in hospitals"

The interesting thing is that there ARE medically-rated PCs, but they cost more, so accountants won't let you buy 'em.

Re: Possibly...

> Just because something is on the internet, and cheap, does not mean it's "real".

Just because it's the same price as the genuine article (or only slightly cheaper) doesn't mean it's real either.

Re: Privatisation

I lived through privatisation in New Zealand.

We _had_ similar problems to UK users, although the party lines were targetted ruthlessly for elimination.

When the Post Office Telecoms department was turned into a State Owned Enterprise (and broken up into multiple operating companies under head office), the first thing they did was eliminate most of the middle management - end result usually being that when you applied for a phone line, you'd get home and find dialtone, or a man preparing to dig up the footpath to run a cable.

It was also profitable.

Everything went to pot when ideologically driven sales resulted in the SOE being sold off. All infrastructure projects got cancelled, plans to dump short-distance toll zones were axed along with plans to majorly drop LD charges(*) and all the operating companies were repaidly remerged into one body. what followed was 20 years of flagrant market abuse (which is why NZ is held up as the poster child for how not to private your telcos). Based around the telco being secure in its belief that as 40% of what traded on the NZSE, plus the single largest investment the NZ govt had in its pension schemes, they were too big to tangle with (and they were, effectively dictating telecommunications policy, despite a "hostile environment" being cited time and time again by external outfits which declined to set foot in NZ)

One of the telling things when the NZ government finally couldn't ignore the problem any longer and moved to curb the telco was that TCNZ attempted to sell the BT/Openreach model, preemptively creating divisions.

The NZ regulators studied what had happened in the UK, realised the extent of market abuse BT has been perpetrating and made any further broadband funding contingent on the breakup of the companies.

The EXACT SAME ARGUMENTS were raised against breaking up TCNZ (Spark/Chorus) as BT is making now, down to the pension liabilities and Openreach not being viable. In the end it's the Openreach side which is robustly healthy(*), whilst the old dialtone company is in serious trouble.

(*) And so is the market. Chorus (NZ's Openreach) sells copper/fibre/duct access to all comers at the same rate, actively seeks out customers instead of hiding and without the dead hand of head office dictating anticompetitive behaviour, things get fixed or installed quickly, no matter who the customer is.

The real irony is that Spark (the old dialtone company) is loudly griping that Chorus charges too much for lines, despite the (govt regulated) figures being based on what was provided pre-breakup, substantially lower than what non-TCNZ customers were paying pre-breakup and the very same company was whining that the proposed line charge figures were too low, pre-breakup.

One caveat though: The NZ regulator has been tough on line charges and may have recently pushed them too low to be sustainable, although it's more likely that they've pushed them out of being "comfortably profitable". They're also strongly encouraging move to fibre everywhere.

Re: Welcome to the change of management Arista

Cisco is certainly panicing.

It was clear from the way they behaved when they realised they were about to lose a purchase of core networking kit at $orkplace. The best they could offer was FUD - and a last-minute attempt to "match pricing" which upon analysis had a lifetime cost twice the price of the competition (instead of 5 times as much) for kit which wasn't as capable as the competition.

Where Cisco _really_ gouge customers is on anciliaries: 1Gb-SX SFP: $6 generic part, or $125 if it's got a cisco label and EEPROM tag on it, built by the same manufacturer

Pima

If you visit Pima, make sure to visit the other museum location at the Titan missile silo.

BOTH are well worth the time.

@gadgetman:

No, they don't. There is no such company as BT Openreach. It's not even operated as a seperate entity internally. _everything_ about it is smoke and mirrors.

This is why New Zealand forced a 100% split between the line and dialtone sides of the incumbent telco (One of the few things they did right. Up to 2011, NZ was a poster child of how NOT to privatise your state-owned telco. Post 2011 the market is transformed thanks to preventing the incumbent pulling the crap that BT still does.)

"Good luck. In my department we've struggled to hire anyone over the last four years. The two or three people have come in and then left after two years"

1: Departments refuse to hire people who can actually do the jobs well

2: Departments refuse to pay them at appropriate levels, because they would mean they're earning more than management.

Re: They are rubbish

"Take your complaint to the Communications Ombudsman. They aren't usually quick, but they usually deliver"

It's the "not quick" part that's the killer. The ombudsman is slower than a month of wet sundays with no internet.

You're not required to take the ombudsman route. Small claims is faster - and you can still make a complaint to the ombudsman to force an apology out of them, etc.

Re: Gone but not forgotten

"Oddly they're still taking my money too. I'm working up a suitably irritated tirade to email to Harding"

Don't bother.

Small claims filings are fast, cheap and TT will get to pay all the costs. (taking money after the contract ends is fraud by deception and they don't want to be slapped with that charge)

You DO NOT have any legal compulsion to deal with their call centre or the ombudsman after leaving and all either will achieve is to waste your time and raise your blood pressure.

You SHOULD write a strongly worded complaint to your bank if TT manage to take anything more once the DD has been rescinded.

Re: Hmmm...

"some of our customers"

Being a number greater than one and less than "all of them"

Of course, many telcos confuse "some" with "all" too.

Re: Ah Diesel Generators

If it's worth installing ONE diesel genny, it's worth installing TWO diesel gennies. (and 2 fuel tanks, so you don't get stupidity as described above).

Split tankage is a no-brainer for long-term fuel storage. Whoever signed off on a single tank should be introduced to Mr RedHot Poker.

Re: Good joke!

"During the 2 years I was there the job centre was haemorhaging staff who simply couldn't deal with constant strain/trauma of making life-destroying decisions based on edicts from above."

Lack of union coverage being rife at job centres by any chance?

Re: Comcast and Co disagree

Power companies and railroads both run extensive comma networks for their own use and sell capacity to third parties as well.

The cost of dropping fibre into a trench beside power line adds negligible extra cost and a lot of outfits are already doing it anyway. The bigger problem in the USA is legislated local monopolies - ie, potential competitors are prohibited from attempting to provide dial tone or broadband services by local ordinances or state rules.