Posts by roytrubshaw

Re: do not enter the hypen!

"The reason for that is that credit card fields have EXACTLY 16 spaces in them.

Sometimes, you just can't fix stupid."

<pedant>

Nor, apparently, can you fix ignorance.

American Express card numbers have 15 digits (4 + 6 + 5), and --- several years after they introduced the 3-digit security CSC (like all the other credit/debit cards) --- I can't find a single payment service (Sage, Worldpay, any of the banks) that will allow you to specify it (the 3-digit CSC) rather than the 4-digit number that is printed on the face of the Amex Card.

Sigh!

</pedant>

In 1986 I wrote a credit card acceptance function for MUD II that stripped out the spaces and --- in every card acceptance page I have authored since then --- that continues to be the case; it seems I'm in a minority of one.

Re: timetables

"When your No 7 to East Acton comes along, there will be three more right behind it all empty. such is the nature of London Busses."

<pedant>

Strictly speaking it's more to do with the nature of London traffic than the bus itself.

It's always a problem in cities and towns; buses would be so much more consistent with the published timetable if it weren't for other road users and --- more importantly --- passengers!

</pedant>

Re: Rainbow

"Red and yellow and pink and green,

..."

<pedant>

No! No! No!

Richard of York gave battle in vain.

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.

</pedant>

Re: As a U.S. taxpayer, I can get behind this...

"There are only 3! Indy movies"

<pedant>

So that's 6 Indy films then; what are the final two?

(3! = 3 x 2 x 1 = 6)

</pedant>

:)

Re: 5 star apple screw driver

"Found the exact battery part from China (40% of apple cost) ..."

Have one of these (it is Friday after all) --->

Though you do need to take care with some of the replacement parts (even the branded Apple parts are probably from China, so it's not the nationality) as they may be poorer quality - possibly more prone to catch fire, or lesser capacity.

There is a difference between noname and branded replacements: I've repaired my wife's phone's screen with both types and the Nokia branded part doesn't cause the phone to freeze and require a reboot and didn't cost all that much more than the noname brand.

"He received a fixed penalty notice in the post and was horrified that he didn't get a copy of the photo."

It used to be asking for the evidence (after a suitable delay) was a good way to get the charge dismissed as the police were apt to dispose of the photographs before the 6 weeks had elapsed.

(Though now I think more critically about this, it's probably an urban legend. Sigh!)

Re: Hmmmn.. pizza!

"> > Great book, one of Niven & Purcell's best. I think...

> Don't you mean Nivia and Purcell? Keep's your hands soft while you turn the pages."

While listening to some 17th Century baroque music...

(I think the original writer meant: Niven and Pournelle)

Re: (energy price cap FFS)

"classically, stopping the tide coming in"

Can we, once and for all, leave old Canute alone: he was trying to point up the absurdity of his sycophantic courtiers,

He was well aware that he couldn't control the sea.

Re: Lots of shielding requires lots of fuel.

"I dont know how much the propellant for a gun like this is but I'd bet its a shit load cheaper than rocket fuel ..."

If one used a railgun then one isn't dealing with a propellant at all, just a source of electricity.

Another advantage is the lack of noise from the explosive combustion of the said propellant, leaving only the sonic boom, so watch out for a sudden brown-out followed by a loud bang (and the sound of breaking glass)!

Re: When prototypes go too far

"ATH+++"

Ha! I switched to my Miracle Modem and I'm safe from your attack!

Still it's very difficult to type quickly at 75 bd and the screen refresh takes a.....g.....e.....s at 1200bd

Re: Airspace

"I thought 83 feet seemed an odd value to settle on, until it dawned on me that it's the same as 25.2984 metres."

I think it was rounded up from 82' 6" and we are looking at a height of 5 rods (poles or perches)*

(*I have waited 50 years to use "rod, pole or perch" in a sentence)

Edit: Dammit! @JohnBrown got in before me!

Re: Supposed to launch in 2024?

"SpaceX is doing it now. By 2024, they will probably strap 5 Falcon 9's around a centre one, call it the "Falcon 42" and have single stage to moon. :)"

Wouldn't that be *8* Falcon 9's? And Falcon Ultar-Super-Duper Heavy? But not SST-Mars :(

Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

"The whole concept is broken at so many levels. It's really just about the ability to shed load."

They're being quite open about it too.

Their current slogan is "Getting Gaz and Leccy under control", the kicker is that it is their control and not your control!

Re: As a long-time Vim user (since 2005 or so)

"TECO forever!!!!!"

Don't use new-fangled stuff like that, all you need is ED!

(Starts searching through DECUS tape directory listings...)

Re: Odd belief

"Automatics because hard to drink coffee, eat donut, steer AND change gear"

Don't forget answering the 'phone and texting!

That said I've never seen the point of doing more work than necessary and my VW DSG can change gear in milliseconds, so why should I muck about being all macho and insisting on a manual? (OK in this case it's pretty much just a manual with an automatic clutch (or two), but my previous cars have all been traditional automatics and there was nothing more satisfying than leaving a manual driving adversary-- sorry fellow driver in the next lane, in the dust at traffic lights - I defy your average driver of a manual car to outperform pretty much any automatic gearbox equipped car driven in "kickdown"!).

Meanwhile was there an earthquake on the night in question?

BTW I am a Brit. and I don't bother with the handbrake either, when the car is in "Park" and the ground is flat.

Re: This is why he got angry.

"And then they "break open the paper rolls of the coins". That would be the rolls they come in from the bank."

I've just read his website and it seems he delivered 5whbs of "UNROLLED" coins, so the "Shear bloody mindedness mascerading as Incompetance.(several sics)" would appear to be on the part of the protagonist (well, the bloody-mindedness part anyway).

"Out with my mate flying his new drone, vertical to about forty feet and slowly moved it away from us at which point it took off at full speed never to be seen again."

Sounds like a hijacking to me...

Re: Very impressive

"Although I would be sorely tempted to build mine inside an FPGA."

Err.. I'm probably misremembering this, but isn't there an FPGA version that runs in parallel for debugging purposes?

Re: Actually, there might be some uses.....

"Knife missile, anyone?"

Have a pint and a point for the "culture" reference!

Still, we have a way to go before we get the force-field technology down, so I think we're safe for a while yet.

Re: This modern world

"The 'back of an envelope' calculation is always a good place to start."

To paraphrase Randall Munroe "any number you can write down basically rounds to zero" so pretty much all your calculations will end up that way!

"Photons are massless and can be thrown off..."

<pedant>

Photons have no rest mass but the do have inertial mass (E=mc^2 and all that) otherwise solar sails won't work...

</pedant>

Re: @AceRimmer1980

"Sorry but all our operatives are busy helping other species at the moment."

Which, for some reason just brings this to mind.

Re: Don't look to the past

Have a pint (and an upvote)!

" I will transition to rocket powered paper weights as soon as they become available and fervently support research into ion drive paper weights"

<pedant>

The rocket-powered paperweight is only good for short-term usage, so as long as you only require your papers to be held down for a few minutes at a time then you're OK; the ion-drive paperweight is a long-term solution for those that require their papers to be weighted for months (possibly years) at a time. They address two different sets of requirements, so you don't need to replace your rocket-powered paperweights with ion-drive paperweights.

</pedant>

Re: Turn that one on its head

"The real question is: what qubit coherence duration is required to solve the problem? As I understand it, at the moment the coherence duration is of the order of milliseconds. What was assumed by the people offering their opinion in this article? If the coherence duration was increased to 1 second, would that do it? 10 seconds?""

And almost immediately we have this news:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/18/researchers_increase_qubit_stability_tenfold_by_dressing_them_with_em_field/

Well done "that man".

"they will do a Google/Facebook search for someone called Serena Butler"

Have an upvote for Dune reference!

The Sahara is expanding, so sandworms are next, where is the Mentat school going to be located?

And is Theresa May a Bene Gesserit or an Honored Maitre?

Re: Woo Hoo!

"Will this mean my VMS skills will be useful again?"

Cool!

Now I need to dig out Richard's and my VAXPascal sources for MUD II and the 1990's revival will be complete.

What we really need is a port of TOPS-10 to x86 any takers?

Re: Radar is well proven, why has it been ignored by Tesla ?

"My Audi is now more than five years old, and it has a driving assistance system which the manufacturer does not market as an "Autopilot", rather they call it Adaptive Cruise Control."

The VW/Audi/etc. system doesn't do autosteer AFAICS.

Since you are still steering the car you are less likely to be disengaged from the road conditions in which you are driving. (Though I find myself entering a "fugue state" on older Motorways if I am not careful.)

If I recall correctly Mercedes and BMW have "lane keeping" assistance features, so they will have some form of autosteer, does anyone know what the accident statistics for these cars are like?

Possibly the main difference between all the cars with this kind of self-drive ability is the fact that the Musk is so high profile and keeps talking about it?

Re: own EV happens to have the exact same problem

"right, lithium being the second most chemically reactive substance in the known universe, and the most reactive of all of the metals."

Err. No. Lithium is the least reactive of the Alkali metals (Group II); in this case reactivity increases as you go down the group. So Caesium would be the most reactive of these metals.

There is an entertaining film I remember from my school days where each metal in turn is reacted with water, which demonstrates this point quite explosively

Here's a YouTube video that contains some of the scenes from that film: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvVUtpdK7xw)

Re: Passive?

"If it does things automagically, that makes it an active system in my book. Just sayin'"

I think the clue is in the following: "The IDA is studded with sensors that feed data to approaching spacecraft so that they can dock automatically without requiring help from inside the habitat."

Personally, I'd rather not have unexpected visitors just dropping in without me present if I was umpteen thousand miles up with nowhere to go if they're less than friendly.

Re: I dumped Facebook

"And I am much happier."

As a friend of my son said, "Life is what happens to other people while you're on Facebook."

Personally I'm waiting for the announcement of the formation of GooFaceMicroTwApple which will then be followed immediately by "The Singularity".

Re: it is not the guns

"It is also important to understand the fear that cops feel everyday on road checkpoints where anybody could fire at him asking papers."

At this point one wonders why take the risk of pulling someone over for what seems like (to my UK ears at least) an extremely trivial matter.

The NRA apparently wants to increase gun ownership, which will lead inevitably to more situations where people (the police included) will be in fear of their lives and will shoot at the slightest hint of increased danger. To quote an article from Cracked (http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-stupidest-arguments-against-gun-control/) "... this is a supersaturated solution of bullets crystallizing out into gravestones."

"... but 64-bit Windows obviously still runs 32-bit apps."

Only because there's a full 32-bit windows emulation built into all 64-bit versions (WIW - Windows In Windows)!

Is this "two for the price of one"-deal the only time that you get more for your money than you expect from Micro$haft?

:)

Re: Biometrics all sounds great

"And that's why Biometrics should NEVER be used as a password, Which can easily be changed once it's been compromised.."

This can't be emphasised enough: Biometric identification is a username not a password!

"That's because at that time the 'Amalgated Union of Professional Thinkers'* strongly opposed the idea of their work being done by machines eventually."

So was there a sudden increase in wandering academic pundits at about this time?

Was the mechanism designed to find the answer* or the question**?

(Oh all right *42, **"What do you get if you multiply six by nine?")

Re: What have the Britons ever done for us...

"Unfortunately, also John Maynard Keynes and the Fired Mars Bar."

Oy! Without "Keynes" there would be only be three North Towers at Essex University, and where would we be then? On second thoughts I'd have had not so far to walk to get to William Morris... (any chance of discrediting R. H. Tawney? :) )

Meanwhile I'm not sure about "Fired Mars Bar", is this referring to the possible creation of a confectionery shooting device (a whole new meaning to fast food), or perhaps some kind of ceramic coating...

Re: Too early to tell.

"It's not about assumptions, it's about theories. And it's always time to re-evaluate theories in the light of new information; we call this process "science"."

Strictly speaking it's about hypotheses, not theories; and just because new information may cause us to expand an existing theory it doesn't stop us continuing to use the old theory as long as its predictions are still useful.

Einstein's General Relativity may have superseded Newton, but Newton's theories are still good enough for NASA successfully to compute the orbits for the Voyager missions for example, and when something replaces General Relativty, our GPS systems will continue to work in spite of that.

Re: Business model?

"So, no, not seeing the USP."

It even worse than you think.

I'm pretty certain that all of the TOCs and other ticket selling entities all use the same codebase.

Because of this it's almost always possible to buy *all* of your tickets from a single source, so it's worthwhile "shopping around" for a site that doesn't - for example - charge you postage if you want an actual ticket as opposed to a paper printout or e-ticket.

In any case, it's almost always possible to improve on a single through-ticket price by breaking your journey at the appropriate boundaries though you do have to be careful that the train on which you are travelling does actually stop at the boundary station(s) you have chosen!

I wonder why there are no automated tools to inform the buyer what the actual cheapest options are?

Re: I think there is a wonderfull message behind this

"http://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf"

Bloody hell! 221 Rules (plus a few extra .1 versions)!

Is it irony on Bjarne's part that there are more "rules" than the maximum number of lines of code allowed in a function or method?

Good grief it's a wonder that any software has been developed at all.