Posts by jake

Re: Ignorance is bliss

"does this mean it's processing it's data off the premises?"

Of course. Why would one install a simple circuit consisting of three pieces of wire, a buzzer, a power source and a button when one can use a computer that has to be networked to a massive bank of servers halfway around the world and requires a cell phone to properly use?

I mean, really! It's obvious, innit?

Re: Jeff Bezos' Ring?

Yo! Jeff! Sit on it!

(Probably dating myself ... )

Re: Apple prices without the desirability

"And crap resale value."

Unless you're the person it's being resold to ... Stick Linux on it and use it as a "who cares" road machine when going into iffy areas. Don't forget your travel insurance.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

The battlefield will sound like a billion invading hornets, striking fear into the very hearts of the enemy ... until the enemy switches on the electronic countermeasures and turns it up to 100,000W of transmit power. Then the silence will be deafening ... followed by the sound of $BIGNUM of drones hitting the ground.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

Muscleguy writes: "This is all about the bravery of being out of range."

That is one of the single most idiotic things I've ever read here on ElReg.

This is all about not putting any more human beings into danger unnecessarily.

You are not even wrong, Jan 0.

Punt gun muzzle velocity was usually lower than that of a modern shotgun (blackpowder and poor wadding were the major factors). However, they were typically loaded with the very same #4 buck that I used in the above example. Lower velocity means lower energy on target equals less penetration. Punt guns were not devastating because of power, they were devastating because of sheer volume of shot, typically firing a pound of shot (~2160 pellets) per load ... and sometimes five or more hunters would fire into a flock simultaneously.

I have taken many duck, from all angles. The direction the ducks are flying makes absolutely no difference to penetration.

I have rarely shot a duck "in the back" .... a duck's back is on top when they are flying, and I am on the ground. Can't hit what I can't see. Not that it makes any difference to me, or the duck. Why would you think otherwise? Anthropomorphizing? Do you think food somehow magically materializes wrapped in plastic in the back room at Tesco/Safeway?

Re: Timing will be critical

How much of that was training, certification and other overhead?

How does that compare to other armies in other conflicts?

Not arguing, as I honestly don't know ... but I am curious.

"Wouldn't a drone mounted .22 have better penetration?"

Sure, but that's not the whole story.

#4 buckshot, with a diameter of 0.24", has a velocity of around 1300fps (mild 12 gauge loads), vs. a .22 at around 1200fps. The .22 weighs in at around 40gr, the #4 buck at 20.6gr. Doing the math, the .22 has around 40% more energy on target (at short distances) ... combine that with stability in flight and projectile shape, and the .22 has the edge.

However, given a single shot there are a lot more chances of hitting the target multiple times with the shotgun.The shotgun fires around 27 projectiles, all hitting an area under 1 foot in diameter (depending on choke and possibly with a few fliers). And even with it's much lower energy, it's still powerful enough for each pellet to do major organ damage. There is a reason they call it buckshot ... it's not for hunting mice!

Note: I'm assuming typical "home defense" distances in the above, which seems reasonable given the topic under discussion. Likewise the #4x27 shot, which is a good all 'round load for this kind of thing.

"duck feathers are a reasonable counter to shotgun pellets"

Interesting statement. Cite? Because my freezer says no ...

Combat shotguns shoot whatever loads are deemed necessary for a given situation.

Don't believe everything you see and hear on youtube ... The only reason any of it exists to get page hits. Especially that side of youtube.

Re: ReCoilLess

"I'm guessing that once it fires it's primary mission is complete, send in another one."

We have a winner!

"If you can no longer use the words "Master" and "Slave" in general computing context"

Ah, but you can. But only if you want to be understood by virtually everybody involved with technology on the entire planet.

"What is "we" in Microsoft context anyways?"

That's when they piss all over you.

Re: I wonder...

Exactly.

There is a reason that "Computer says no." as an answer can still be funny ...

Re: Windows?

But also being Windows, they have been conditioned by decades of Redmond "technical support" to turn it off and back on again to see if that helps.

A few minutes?

Probably under ten seconds ... The lock on that kind of box is usually very easy to get past. They aren't designed with security in mind, they are designed to keep idiots from electrocuting themselves.

From TFA

"That's six peta-operations-per-second, or more specifically, six quadrillion INT8 calculations per second."

Re: Drats!

You can buy one new (if empty) for roughly the same price, and kit it out any way you like. A friend of mine has a couple of them (bought at scrap prices[0]), one he uses for spare parts storage on track days, one he uses for all his drone kit, and another one in his nursery greenhouse for the little bits & bobs that he uses when starting seedlings, transplanting, rooting cuttings, and that kind of thing.

[0] Alan Steel & Supply in Redwood City in his case, call the scrap yard(s) near your local airport and see if you get lucky.

Re: glory of air travel

Scheduled air transport is awful. Nay, make that absolutely atrocious.

Military air travel can be OK, but usually isn't.

General Aviation is the only way to fly.

Re: Empty prose.

You're also getting the cart itself, which start at around that price new (sans drawers, logos, other decorations & etc., which are optional extras).

Re: Among the odder products of the COVID-19 pandemic are “flights to nowhere”

"Is "communist" some new USAism for commuting?"

I have never heard the term used that way here on the Left Coast, but I suspect they mean public transportation. The Right Coast has a rather poor sense of humo(u)r at the best of times.

"why would visitors wish to leave the Garden State in such a hurry?"

You've obviously never been there. To give you an idea of how bad that part of the world actually is, most New Jerseyites actually think Florida is a nice place to vacation.

Re: Increasingly miniature spy drones for sale to the public

"...waiter, waiter. There's a spy cam drone in my soup."

:::shhhh:: ... Everyone will want one!

Re: ROTFL!

Whitespace doesn't matter, haven't you heard? (Unless you use some perverse programming language or other, of course. Or Whitespace, which is a fun teaching tool.)

Re: Sadly... this is the beginning of the end

There was a lot of code-swapping between Berkeley and AT&T until AT&T's lawyers noticed that UNIX might be a money maker.

The IBM/Interactive Systems Corporation kludge included IX/370 and PC/IX (which were odd-ball variations on the theme, to say the least) and AIX Version 1 (which was BSD and SysVR1 & 2 based and ran only on the RT PC) ... All later versions of AIX were pure IBM. And showed it.

There was no System IV ... there was no System I or System II, either.

Re: Sadly... this is the beginning of the end

"Berkley itself was heavily funded by just about all commercial UNIX operators"

Berkeley (the Computer Systems Research Group) was funded by DARPA. They were intentionally not beholden to any commercial entity.

Re: Sadly... this is the beginning of the end

Did you read what you typed in the context of what you quoted before hitting submit?

Re: Sadly... this is the beginning of the end

"Of the two which is going to be used fro application development?"

Quite honestly. it shouldn't matter. make install should work on any distribution put together by sane maintainers. If it doesn't, I humbly suggest either the code you are trying to install, or the distribution you are trying to install it on has been gotten at by Marketing with the explicit intent to tie you to whatever their flavo(u)r of the month is.

Re: Sadly... this is the beginning of the end

Oh. I didn't realize that a distro had to be mainstream to be counted. My bad.

Remind me again what "mainstream" means? I'd hate to make that mistake again.

As a side note, converting between the major distribution formats is fairly trivial ... there is nothing magical about a .deb or RPM ... or a tarball, for that matter.

Re: Sadly... this is the beginning of the end

Fair enough. But then I run Slackware, which not only doesn't ship with the systemd-cancer, it also doesn't ship with Gnome. Both for very good reasons, I might add.

Re: Don can RIP

Two points: 1) That's Don Estridge. 2) Yer butter's done slipped off yer biscuit.