Posts by G R Goslin

bring backlewis

bring back Lewis Page, I say. Always good for a realistic outlook and an interesting point of view

Is this strictly legal?

I mean, if a driver in , say, a Ford Mondeo, cut into you in traffic, are you going to be allowed to create a device which will cause all Ford Mondeo's within a sevan mile radius to run off the road and crash?

Pointless and expensive technology

Thgere are many things which would be improved with automatic control. Even in transportation. Planes can fly themselves, and usually do, Ships ditto. Trains ditto. But cars and commercial vehicles. No. With the former the pilot/driver, or whatever has plenty of time, generally, to take in the situation, before taking action. Not so, on the road. If the cars autopilot hands over control, it's likely to be mere seconds before disaster strikes. In the classic case where someone steps off the kerb as a car approaches, the drivers reaction time is likely to be more than a second. And the driver is supposed to be concentrating on the task of driving. If he, or she is not concentrating, the accident will be long over before the driver gets his/her thought into gear. The other thing, of course is cost. Frankly I don't think even the Government could conceive such a waste of money and resources as automatic control. The insurance companies, of course will have a field day. An excuse to put up premiums, and at the same time, a host of reasons why they can hive off the costs to other organisations. And, of course, nice fat spin-offs to the legal profession.

Is SSD really the reason?

I must admit I don't understand the situation. The quality of HDD's does seem to have dropped, and would prompt a change to a more reliable medium. But, as far as I can see SSD's are still wincingly expensive and run somewhat lower in capacity. I currently run a Drobo FS, with five 4TB drives (16TB net) , nudging 80% capacity. I shudder to think how much that would cost me in SSD's

Dunno their born, some people

I was an engineering draughtsman for about 30 years, and one thing you cannot do when working at a full size drawing board is sit down. Sure you had a chair, or rather a stool, but that was only for use in the ten minute tea break, or for when you were doing the calculations necessary in the job. The machine shops that you'd come from ran even better. In an area of perhaps 500 men, there'd not be a single chair. So you took your tea break standing up.

A hint?

Is this a hint that Amazon, at last, are going to have some of these to sell?

Conjecture

All this is conjecture, of course. If you're allowed to guess at the original conditions, unsupported, you can come up with an infinite number of theories about almost anything.

Pardon me, but

There does seem to be a number of errors in this account, which I hope is not a factor in the original article in Nature. To assert that a star 'dies' when it has used up its store of hydrogen, is incorrect. If it was correct, the universe would consist only of the light elements. No, fusion continues of the heavier elements after depletion of hydrogen at its core. Fusion can deliver energy up to the mass of iron, and does. The snag is that the amount of energy diminishes with increasing mass. The latter stages coming quicker and quicker. The final effect is not an explosion, but a collapse. The amount of energy released in this phase feeds more reactions, whilst the superabundance of neutrons are absorbed by the heavy elements to create elements heavier than iron, up to and past the transuranic elements. The subsequent explosion that we see as a supernova, is, in effect a 'dead cat bounce'

Rule of law

It's all very well to comment when you live in a (semi) lawful society. Unfortunately in much of Africa, the Rule of Law is "What is mine is mine, and what is yours is mine, if I want it". It's not very likely that the lady's five hens would last long enough to bear live eggs, before ending up as someone else's supper.. My daughter, in this country raised hens. Five as I recall. The local dogs got two and the local foxes got the rest. Luckily, she didn't have the sort of neighbours that would know what to do with a chicken that was not shrink wrapped.

Gravitational potential?

As was pointed out earlier. The force of gravity, at the centre of the Earth is zero. Although not exactly at the centre, since the Earth and the Moon are a mutually orbiting pair. So the gravitational centre rotates about the true centre at every rotation of the Moon in its orbit. There's a similar effect due to the Sun. However, the gravitational potential is near zero. Does this not invalidate the hypothesis? Or even reverse it?

Forgive me...

Forgive me for stating the bleeding obvious. Anyone with more than one device is going to, proportionately, more problems. It applies to anything. If the family have two cars, they'll have twice as many breakdowns, punctures, . . As someone pointed out once, four engine aircraft have four times as many engine failures as single engines. It simply matters less. Get real, people. The only instance where this fails, AFAIK, is if you have more than one wife, where it tends to be logarithmic.

Shortage

There shouldn't be a shortage of Helium, particularly with the shale gas revolution. Helium is present from the radioactive decay of Uranium (Alpha radiation = Helium nuclei). Extraction is simple, just freeze until the Helium is left behind. All it costs is money. If the price was right, it would be done. Presumably, it isn't.

Honest

I'm sorry, but I don't think that you can use 'government' and 'honest', in the same sentence.. Particularly if 'US' also appears in the same sentence.

Alas, I knew Dabs well, of old, Horatio

I only had to read down to " they’re managed by the very same team,” BT said.", to forget the rest. I was once an avid buyer from Dabs. Price Service, Stocks and Delivery, were first rate. Then BT hove up and the effort of years went straight down the pan. Haven't used em for years. I only had to look at the price and stock levels to be persuaded to go elsewhere

12% THINK they know what it means

The usual glib lies before it comes into force. THEN it will be explained. After that will come the explanations that it means what we now want ti to mean, which is not clear from what it says.

Well...

...it's what you'd expect when ALL parties in Parliament are totalitarian. The power-mad abhor Democracy, and you have to be power-mad to want to sit in Parliament. Get used to it!

Nothing new, here

There's nothing new in standing up, at work. I started work in a factory, as an apprentice. There, sitting down at work was not only not an option, it was specifically not allowed. Later, I moved to one of the drawing offices. There you had a high stool, unpadded and unbacked, only to find that it was not possible to sit and work on a drawing board at the same time. The only sitting you did was when working on calculations (long hand). Even the foremen, who spent a lot of time writing, had a stand up desk, in the middle of the machine shop, amid the noise and dirt. They could not argue that they couldn't hear anyone on the 'phone, since there were none.

If this is in customer service....

...It will be no loss. I had the "customer service" routine, when something I ordered failed to arrive. It took six weeks and innumerable 'phone calls on my part, to resolve. A subsequent complaint, in respect of the poor way it had been handled went even better. It ran for seven months and never got beyond my first letter of complaint.

Talking of...

Talking of "Gnats cock" as a unit of size, a friend of mine, in the production engineering business, used to regard, as the standard unit of size significance was "half a gnats pubic hair". The removal of such would give two mating parts the proper sliding fit. Here's to you Bob!

Yet again

Yet again, another "research" article equating opinion with data, and getting proof from conjecture. Excuse me if I don't believe a word of it

Big?

How does this compare in size with the Thornycroft Antar, MkIII, of yore. Now that was a BIG machine, and far handsomer than this.. I think the only chrome on the Antar was the large 'T' on the radiator. It sounded nice, too. A cut down version of the Merlin aircraft engine.. If it had only had the howl of the original supercharger.

Why not hydrogen?

Why are HDD's not filled with hydrogen? Power station generators are cooled with hydrogen because it's an effective coolant, with low drag, and it's cheaper and easier to get than helium. Which I hear from other applications, has a tendency to leak.

Perhaps

Perhaps you should ask GCHQ if they'd let you have a copy of their copy of your files as they were before Cryptowall struck.

Phew!!

"The Los Angeles area remains the second-largest metro area in the US and, in addition to the film and television industries, technology giants including SpaceX, IBM, and Google maintain offices around LA employing thousands of workers. ®"

Offices! Well, that's a relief. It's not as if it was going to hit anywhere important!

Itain't necessarily so!

There was so much garbage written in this article, that it's apparent that the writer has no idea how (or why) a diesel engine works. The diesel engine and the petrol engine work by two entirely different concepts . That for the petrol engine is combustion at constant volume, that of the diesel combustion at constant pressure. In the petrol engine the fuel and air are compressed until ignited by the spark. The gas/air mixture burns in a flash. The pressure rises instantly and provides the driving force. In the diesel, the air alone is compressed . At the end of compression, the fuel is sprayed in over a period of time, so the pressure remains the same, since the piston is descending on the power stroke. The Pressure/Volume (PV) diagram for the diesel is nearer the ideal (The Carnot Cycle, which indicates the ultimate efficiency that may be obtained) than that of the petrol. In practise, the distinction is slightly blurred, but the distinction is still appropriate. Oddly the diesel as invented by Herr Diesel is not a diesel engine in that it is not combustion at constant volume, but, like the petrol engine is combustion at constant volume. In fact the only diesel engines still in use are the engines made for model aircraft, and as far as I know the last commercial true diesel engine was the Vincent Firefly, a cycle motor made in the mid fifties by the Vincent Motorcycle Company during the craze for motor assisted bicycles. It should be noted that Herr Diesel was NOT the inventor of the Diesel Engine that bears his name. The true diesel engine was invented by gentleman of the name Ackroyd-Stuart. His engine was being made and sold by Hornsby and Company of Lincoln, two years before Herr Diesel built his engine. It is this engine on which the modern diesel is based.

In this debacle, my sympathies lie entirely with Volks Wagen and other car manufactures. . Governments issue directives. The directives do not have to based on logic, or indeed have to be obtainable under the laws of Thermodynamics. No doubt the car manufactures argued long and hard to convince the authorities otherwise/ To no avail I've a sneaking suspicion that VW have done nothing unlawful. No doubt their lawyers and engineers have long laboured to create a test which adheres tightly to the provisions of the statute. Much like Google, Apple, Starbucks, etc have laboured long to establish a financial regime which avoids paying taxes, entirely within the legal requirements. The article writer did make one point which seems to have been missed by most other commentators. The US has no diesel powered car manufacture. Every diesel powered car imported to the US is one car not manufactured by the US car industry. I'm sure that their lawyers and engineers laboured long and hard to formulate rules which would effectively exclude the VW from the US

What to do

Once again, we have a flood of verbiage about the latest peril. And as usual, it's the same sort of advice as how not to catch pneumonia (Wrap up warm and do. Surely the abnormal IO should paint a picture?n't go out in the cold). Why do we not have information regarding the carriers of the malware, specific occasions and places where it may be picked up, and information as to how to spot it. Yes, I have anti-virus, but that is about as opaque as the articles. How about some "do not use" lists, symptom lists. If you are part of a bot-net, why is there nothing that indicates that you have unusual traffic?

Not distilling

I don't think they actually say they're distilling it up there. Merely storing the distilled product, using the microgravity effect to nullify 'convective' issues. However, they can do that cheaply, on planet Earth, by simply holding the container in water deep underground. The temperature, there, in the absence of flowing water or air remains remarkably stable, and of course, in a fluid, gravity does not have any effect, so long as the liquid is homogenous, and if a mixture of liquids, is totally miscible.

Oh, no!!

Not more bloody Bells and Whistles I spent an age trying to get back to a saner FF. It worked for a time, but I was driven even madder by the relentless admonishments to update. Then I was sent mad by the two steps back and one step forward to get back from a Google search. Then sent mad by the icons of old pages on every new tab. Keep it simple, dammit!

Jack of all trades....

....and master of none, comes to mind. On past record, it might wll be true

have you tried....?

It would appear to me that Mr Dabbs is approaching this problem from the wrong direction. It is obviuos that the problem is that his wife is incompatible with the system. Therefore, he needs to upgrade his wife or to exchange his present wife wirh one that has a different set of working parameters. Say, in the estate agency field, or accountancy, where the software is a popular is more up to date with demand.

So

So we're going to see a vast dimunition of the hordes of crime lords, and such, being daily dragged before the couts. What crime lords, and such, I hear you say. So, shortly, the list of hospitals, libraries, schools, homes for the aged, will be swelled with the closure of prisons, too.

But

But, surely, all the factors used in assessing the mass are all similarly undefined, or defined by statutory standards.

Committees, Don't talk to me about committees!

I can't see anything wrong with this. Committees are a waste of time. So why not waste your time in doing something pleasant? Imstead of merely gazing at the wall opposite?

Well, I've had it with Firefox

Firefox, I;ve found, is one of those things which used to be nice. But now is not. It has so many things I dislike. I spend my time in either getting rid, or finding how to get back. Like the back button that takes you, willy-nilly to a Google search page. So to go back one page back, it's two pages back and one page forward. Why? Another is the crowding of super-thumb images of old pages on a new tab. Why? . It serves no useful purpose. There are many others. I've not abandoned Firefox. I've merely ditched the latest and gone back to Ver 27, when things were much saner.

And there was I....

And there was I thinking that the test was to establish whether or not you had due competence in driving a car in all circumstances, with you mind totally concentrated on what was happening on the road.

It's all very well

It's all very well telling us about percentages and such. But how about telling us WHICH apps are suspect?

Linux?

Anything in there for us Linux users? Mine has not shifted from the rather stark setup since shortly after the startup.