Posts by Morrie Wyatt 162 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Oct 2008
"A few years back I was working for Scotrail, well not them, but as a sub contractor to the contractor contracted to the contractor with the contract for Scotrail."
Lone Star, is that you?
The Schwartz be with you.
Dark Helmet: I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate.
My father used to work for the now defunct "Vinten Communications".
They had one "wiresman" who was absolutely meticulous in his wiring. If a wire entered a loom at a particular location, you could be certain it would come out at exactly the same location at the other end of the loom.
So this fellow was always assigned the new prototypes, as his attention to detail made any necessary troubleshooting of the new prototype so much easier.
One day after he had finished assembly of one such prototype unit, the staff gathered around to watch it fire up for the first time.
The power was switched on, and after a few moments smoke started wafting out of the prototype.
The wiresman's face slowly turned white as the smoke billowed forth.
Unbeknownst to him, the staff had hidden some paper drinking straws taped end-to end into the back of the unit, with one of the staff hidden away at the far end of these straws, blowing cigarette smoke down the straw. Fortunately for the poor wiresman, one of the observers couldn't hold a straight face for too long, exposing the practical joke as everyone cracked up laughing.
Strangely enough the poor wiresman was not amused.
So Douglas Adams was right, even before he wrote that "what they really couldn't stand was a smartarse."
Icon? Well where there's smoke...
Back in the late 70s, I was a young apprentice.
The company I worked for also imported cheap Taiwanese bench grinders.
One of these had been returned under warranty, so was on the department manager's bench with the base off to check the wiring. When nothing obvious presented itself the switch was turned on and we retreated to the office doorway. These grinders used a large capacitor and a centrifugal switch to energize the motor start winding with the resulting L/C circuit providing a phase shift to ensure the motor started in the right direction. The grinder started up and seemed to be running normally, until with a loud bang, the capacitor blew its lid, (through the small covered pressure relief hole in the end of the cap) blasting a jet of evil smelling vapor directly at all standing in the doorway.
We at least now knew what the fault was. The centrifugal switch "didn't", leaving the start winding connected. The start winding and capacitor weren't designed to run for more than about 10 seconds, so the capacitor overheated, boiling the electrolyte until the weak point cried uncle.
The office became almost uninhabitable for days, and took many months before the smell finally faded to barely perceptible levels.
I still work for the same company some 40 odd years later.
" Next Amazon delivery setup, orbital warehouses dropping capsules with whatever you ordered.
The step after that, they drop meals which cook using the heat of re-entry."
http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3046
(Start at 3042 for the back story. Or better still, start at 1 for the full experience.)
When you take into account that Sun originally touted Java as being "C++ --" it was built directly upon the syntax and power of C++ (and C before it), but added on garbage collection to mitigate memory leaks, (their reasoning behind the --) Java can't really stand on the high ground of "Original Code".
It is (allegedly) a progression from the work of those that came before.
Now when Google created their own runtime engine, that used the same basic Java code syntax and function naming conventions, with the explicit blessings of Sun, later bought by Oracle, Oracle now choose to cry foul?
The mobile JRE produced by Sun / Oracle had many inclusions that had absolutely no use in the Android marketplace, but Oracle demanded that to use Java in the mobile space mandated the use of their Mobile JRE (with ongoing royalties), so Google chose to develop their own runtime engine, Dalvik, which they specifically do not call a JRE as it doesn't implement the full Java specification, or claim to be a Java engine.
Now Oracle claim that because it uses Java like syntax and naming (C++ -- anyone?) that Google is infringing upon their copyright.
Neither Pot or Kettle are without their optical spectrum absorption properties here, but Oracle's greed on this one would move all programming back into the dark ages, as nobody could program anything without fear of being sued for copyright infringement because multiplication and division get called from the "Math" library, and user the characters * and / respectively. (Clearly infringing upon the API copyright rather than just being a sensible aggregation of like processes with a logically descriptive library name. That is basically what Oracle are arguing.)
And don't get me started on software patents!
(I sincerely miss the wonderful work of Pamela Jones and Groklaw on topics such as this.)
also fall with a hell of a thud, when (not if) the rotors suddenly stop spinning due to any number of possible causes. Even with some sort of "Dead Man" chute arrangement, you still have a heavy payload that is guaranteed to obey the law of gravity, ending up:
(a) stuck on a roof,
(b) in a tree,
(c) on a busy freeway,
(d) all of the above.
Pretty well anywhere other than the intended destination.
And you can bet that the lawyers will be on standby when it does.
And as the ability to hover at the intended destination will be an indispensable requirement, two or more spinning rotors are guaranteed to be present, ready to slice and dice their way through any (in)convenient obstacle(s).
And all this from the self-same countries that screamed blue murder over data sovereignty and "Safe harbor" because their citizens privacy might be impacted.
Now we know why. This way they might be able to keep all the data where their backdoored encryption keys can be used to get at it.
What? Me cynical?
Considering the history and expense already involved in this case:
Require TSCOG to deposit a security bond with the court before proceeding with the appeal process.
Enough to cover court costs, and the total value of IBM's counterclaims (with triple damages of course) in the event that TSCOG lose on appeal.
I'm sure that the Court can set the bond at a suitable value.
And if TSCOG do win anything on appeal, the bond is to be distributed among TSCOG's outstanding bankruptcy creditors. (Along with a very serious slapping for not having used this money for paying outstanding creditors in the first place.)
If you can't afford to lose, don't play.
(Cheques, Credit Cards, Promissory Notes, TSCOG Stock Certificates, IOU's and lotto tickets not accepted. Strictly cash or equivalents.)
By which I presume you actually mean landed on "Of course I still love you" somewhere out at sea?
Which makes the landing all the more impressive.
Congratulations to Elon and his crew.
(The icon? Not This Time at least.)
The fire was pointing in the correct direction so it did go to space today.
They, even more than advertising, are one of the banes of my existence.
They require flash, java, and a variety of other plugins such as ActiveX and every other malware magnet de-jour, just so you can answer normally blatantly obvious multi-guess questions to qualify online for access to a building site.
Particularly with our good old Australian ADSL internet access, that streams the associated videos at 0.5 bits per millennium.
All for the purposes of safety of course.
"When small, they are of course much denser and that means that, y'know, when you are a person, you still have all your man-sized strength but in a much smaller space which means ... more strength ...?"
Matter with the space removed is the basic secret behind the gravity of a black hole after all.
And I'm old enough to remember analogue mechanical wrist watches, where tapping on the crystal is a bad move, because the force would be applied through the tip of the balance wheel pivots and could smash the little ruby bearings due to the concentration of force from a wide area (the balance wheel) onto a pivot only a few thou wide.
So greater strength?
I suppose, given the suspension from a NASA Saturn V Mobile Launcher Platform to support the weight of my disbelief that there could just be the barest shade of support for the premise.
That someone can film one of these final flights with special attention paid to audio quality.
There are many clips on youtube that lose out due to all of the wind noise recorded because the mic was unprotected.
I really want that howl stored in highest possible quality for future generations to experience.
Unfortunately, living in Australia I am unlikely to be able to ever hear it first hand.
The minimum figure would be AU$131M of course.
Add all running and compliance costs as a 100% tax deduction.
The only way the government should expect this retention scheme to operate is a cost to the government, not to the ISP.
Let the costs be deducted from the politicians pay packets. See how quickly they would vote that through the upper and lower houses!
In the context of Rand Paul's usage, it is a way of running down the clock.
Those that hold the majority within the senate are allegedly in favour of the bill going through, so the only way to prevent it is to stop it from reaching the vote.
The bill can't be voted upon while senate discussion is ongoing.
As I understand it, the rules explicitly permit a speaker to have their entire point of view heard, no matter how long it takes.
So as the parliamentary session is of limited duration, if Rand Paul is able to tie up all of the remaining available time, the senate will not get to put the bill to the vote during this session.
With provisions within the Patriot Act about to expire, if the vote is not taken, the expiry will drop them from the act, requiring another run through the parliament to get them re-instated.
Lather, rinse, repeat for long enough, and the Patriot Act can be de-fanged to some degree, with no further additions for an indefinite period.
(All usual disclaimers apply. IANAL, don't play one on TV, not a politician etc.)
To be fair, this is an exploit of the underlying hardware, not a flaw in linux itself.
After all, you can slow down a hard disk disk I/O by yelling at it. (the accoustic vibration affects the read heads positioning, multiplying latency.) This is just another case of rattling the hardware until somthing breaks.
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