Re: KB5001716? Again!?!?!
Wow, what a pain!
Makes me think of the phrase told to me many years ago "Life's too short to stuff a mushroom". Some things are just not worth it.
1068 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Sep 2006
Floppy! Ha, paper tape with G-codes anyone?
We have 2 machines with floppys, 1 with USB so yes they have a long life. They do get more difficult to maintain as they get older. One machine had a hard disc fail (IDE) and we were quoted over £500 for a replacement. I found a few in an old cupboard (one of which which we used) and the engineer then told me to hang on to them as they were getting like unicorn droppings (very rare and hard to find).
"..controllers for $100k CNC machines"
Yup, we just got a new machine for that sort of money (last month). Briefly during boot up, before the custom screen appears there is a windows splash screen. You can connect these things to the network (and are recommended to do so by the manufacturers), many do, we don't.
On a new machine here (win11), with all new applications installed, as soon as I opened an old file I noticed an old printer driver was installed. This machine had gone to recycling long ago, but I assume because the old file had a record of which printer was last used, the OS decided to install the driver (yes it was an HP). I can't see a good reason for this unless you actually try to print it. I have removed it, but it keeps re-appearing so now it will live on, forever reminding us how far we have come in printer driver management, oh hang on....
"How about putting renewable power generation near the demand?"
It is happening with a lot of UK industry, mainly solar of course. Most UK water companies have the space to do it (and they are) and of course have a constant demand.
In years gone by a lot of water was pumped overnight (to fill service reservoirs) as the 'leccy was cheaper and the MD (maximum demand) limit higher. Today more can be done during the day when the sun shines - shifting water around uses a lot of energy.
Icon is 95% water.
Just in case anyone has no idea how that much money could be spent on paper records, here is one answer:-
A large city centre hospital near me has no space left on site so they have a separate secure facility a few miles away, sort of an industrial estate type building. A fleet of vans, and a team of people, go back and forth 24/7 to send/retrieve patient records. How anyone thought this was cost effective/efficient/timely as the hospital expanded over the decades is hard to fathom, but here we are and hopefully their digitization process is a little more advanced than some.
"I mean, before buying a fleet of those things, preferably."
Orkney is one of the most monitored places in the UK for windspeeds, having been the trial location for many experimental wind turbines over the last 40 years and more. So yes, hopefully someone had a glance at some records.
.. sometimes is useful. Example, I can be watching a youtube video on one computer and have to stop. Later I can fire up another computer, fire up youtube and press play, it carries on from the same place. Amazing to many, and relies on all the tracking stuff. Obviously not all will want or agree with this, but I think many users do and it gives them a benefit. The rest of us have ways of turning it off at the moment.....
My wish list for browsers would include better methods to enable more users to spot dodgy websites not the other way around as this seems to propose.
..then wheel is dynamic zoom, press and hold wheel is dynamic pan. I use this quite often.
Also in some browsers, press and hold wheel is dynamic scroll (usually just up and down), but speed is variable depending how far you move from the point of press. Also has it's uses. I am always disappointed when it doesn't work in some applications.
4 years later I am just as confident that they will not meet the rollout date. Quick - change the goalposts!
So many problems with this scheme, many as described in the article. I think most folks by now will have either direct or indirect (bad) experience so it's not going to get quicker.
I know personally folks who have been cut off by their own meter (software error - network oops) and many where the smart meters have gone dumb. I am just waiting for the network hack to take out a whole load in one go.
Meanwhile we are paying for this in our bills, like it or not.
If you want your diesel backup generator to be reliable, then you test it frequently. For a typical modern turbo diesel that means every month, for an hour, on load, just like your car. Proper data centres will have a dummy load switched in/connected for this purpose in one form or another, hospitals maybe not as they aren't so important (cynical, moi?). I like to think the staff running this routine with veg oil will have it on the schedule as "frying tonight" (with Keneth Williams voice).
As that is only a small amount of fuel used, the bulk storage tank will need to be refreshed to stop it, as pointed out, going all "gunky". Get your diesel polished regularly.