Posts by maffski

Re: Not the first piece of absurd preaching to come from the SQLite team

'...Threads are evil. Avoid them...'

.'..After I've realised why it's evil not to throw away 75%+ of the processing power available to my application...'

There speaks a man who has never had a race condition.

Re: AURA get your ears on

AURA is the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, not some kind of shadowy military outfit.

How can you be sure, huh? HOW CAN YOU BE SURE?!

Because they study the sun. And you can't do that from a shadow can you? Obvious when you think about it.

Re: Plonker

'An online booking system will save lives? Rot, having doctors receptionists actually answer their phones might.'

Of course an online booking system means the receptionist has more time to answer their phones.

My GP has an online booking system. Works perfectly well. Doesn't require central government or NHS to stick it's oar in.

There is no more beautiful sight than the vista of (Kingston upon) Hull.

Receding.

Re: We can watch if from the UK

'yes, Europeans are really bad at at big scientific projects, they never deliver, just look at Large Hadron Collider'

The Large Hadron Collider is a great example of what public funding can do. Because it's a public good. It's knowledge for the the sake knowledge. It's exactly the kind of thing private enterprise is unable to deliver.

A really fast computer is a great example of what public funding should never do. Because it's a product people will pay to use. It's exactly the kind of thing private enterprise excels at.

Look at the size of Intel, that alone proves public funding shouldn't be spent on computing design.

Re: Missed the obvious one

.Net Visual SourceHub for Business 365 Cloud Services Edition

Be careful not to install the cut down -core edition, it's incompatible and will corrupt your source.

Re: Swansea 0 London 13 mil

Rather than arguing about it's location it would be better if they just didn't p**s 13 million quid of our money up the wall.

We managed to get a senior Lloyds Bank suit to fly in from the US to hear us pitch our startup idea from a crummy little office in the north of england. It didn't require a 'tech creche' or tax payers money.

(And no, we didn't get any investment. The idea was credible... ...we weren't)

@Dan 55 Re: I disagree...

I don't think it's an either/or situation. With that much money to burn he could do both.

Which, of course, he is. If he pays the wages of some rocket engineers then he's paying their income taxes (and sales taxes on all they buy etc.). If he buys rocket gizmos from some supplier then he's paying towards the corporation taxes of the suppliers (and the taxes of their employees etc.)

It's not like he's loading the rocket up with 100 dollar bills and blasting them into space.

Re: Chokes with laughter

...I wonder if even our truly, wretchedly stupid and ignorant politicians imagine that that is possible?

Perhaps they think that, until it's ready, we'll just use GPS. The same way we have done for the last 30 years.

@Dave 126

'...For bridges...a safety factor of around 3 is common, for airliners... 1.5 (150%) is used. Given a Mars mission has more constraints in common with an aeroplane than it does a bridge 120% sounds about right...'

So what you're saying is... ...we should build a bridge to mars?

Re: The questionable thing to do.

'In the UK our politicians have been convinced that patents have some sort of constructive function, and mostly tried to push the worst of the UK patent system into Europe out of ignorance'

Invention is, by it's very definition, a public good. Once one person has figured out how to do something we all get the benefit of being able to do it. We love public goods as they make life a little better for everyone.

The trouble with delivering a public good is that it doesn't put food in your belly.

We would like there to be more invention, so we get the public good, but people have no reason or opportunity to invent. We have two possible solutions to this, one is taxation and public research, the other is to just agree among us all that if someone comes up with a good idea we'll promise not to use it ourselves for a little while so they can make a profit.

This is the patent system (and copyright). And you think it has no constructive function?

Re: What planet are you on?

'Can somebody please explain to this poor thick Irishman what the British politicians think is going on?'

You'll have to follow closely because this will be a strange concept for someone from Ireland. But we were given a vote on something and when we gave an answer the EU didn't like our politicians actually followed our instructions.

Re: all its very same golden-year grey heads that largely voted for Brexit

'...What is known is that there were more remain among the more educated and more leave among the less educated, more remain in the younger generation and more leave in the older generation. And then there was regional differences and then there was all those who did not vote and those who had no vote. And that's about it....'

What is known is that there was more leave than remain. And that's about it.

It's the very basis of democracy. That your opinion isn't worth more than mine, and that my opinion isn't worth more than yours.

Although regarding the story, lots of people doing well in the current situation want the current situation to continue so they can do well. Quelle surprise.

...mirrored armor

Mirrors ain't perfect.

Re: "Ballockets! I say!"

I prefer a Rocloon myself, but they do keep going through the garbage.

Re: The Model 3 is coming.... er??? 2019 or is that 2020?

'They are having issues scaling their production up to levels exptected by the arse talkers from Wall St.'

The arse talkers of Wall St. are irrelevant. The established manufacturers are coming and Tesla has a year or so to get volume manufacturing going or it will be swamped. JLR is first up with the I-pace but Audi will be along before the end of the year.

Re: Isn't this a consequence of being in the EU?

'More rational solution: stop the £9.9 billion in profits being vanished or tax the firms pulling this shit on revenue instead.'

So all that design and engineering work that Apple does mostly in California is not responsible for any of the value in selling iPhones to Parisians? Do want to be the one to tell Trump that is US can't tax that value?

Re: Have you ever seen Thomas the Tank Engine?

And that time the fat controller forced them into an engine centipede?

Re: Where are the Brexit fans?

We've already applied to ICANN for .xeu

You could perhaps make it a bit progressive

Why not make it really progressive by saying people who want to live in the middle of nowhere and have fast broadband can pay for supplying fast broadband to the middle of nowhere?

If you want electricity or gas you have to pay the cost of the install, are you really suggesting that broadband is more important to modern life than having an electricity supply?

Re: It shows why freemarkets and capitalism work so well

'Well, there was the 6 million dollars of VC funding that could have been more gainfully spent on something more useful to society.'

No. They didn't just set fire to the money; it went to suppliers and employees, who will then spend or invest it.

Re: Unbelievable

It's about throwing good taxpayer money at assholes so they can be still more of an asshole.

Those with a vested interest will always have reason to lobby for their interest, and have no opposition as no one else cares about their interest.

So the public purse will always be co-opted to the enrichment of the few at the cost to the many.

Re: In the new automated world we are creating...

No, they just have to restrict who is allowed to feed information into it

No, 'I was only following orders' is exactly the wrong thing to do. The systems needs a healthy level of cynicism built it.

competition drives efficiency... ...That's not a good plan for countries

Because competition drives efficiency, by inefficient companies being liquidated or taken over. That's not a good plan for countries.

Mostly it forces organisations to become more efficient, this is just as true for a country as a company.

And liquidation and take overs? That's just sovereign default and revolution. Neither of which are especially uncommon.

Re: Whaaat...

If BT can wholesale at (currently) between £88 & £89 per annum, WFT do they provide by way of "added value" for their retail customers, given what they (which includes me!) have to pay?

Baumol's cost disease

Re: I'm not sure what the point of that article was...

Michael will be speaking DevOps at our Continuous Lifecycle London 2018 event. Full details, including early bird tickets, right here.

This was the point of the article. To tell you that the author will be speaking at a conference. He will speak for a very long time. No one will be able to decide if he said anything.

It's just a massive hole. No, my mistake, it's Bradford

Except those 10m homes will be chosen, in part, for install costs. Feeding fibre through a recent posh apartment block might get you 100 homes for the same cost as 10 houses down a residential street.

And Bradford? Well, we could always half the costs by just digging it up and not filling in the holes, it's not like you could tell the difference.

Re: It was never going anywhere NEAR Mars

*If* the aim was to burn the rest of the fuel to exhaustion

yes

just to kick the car as hard as possible

no

they need to burn through all the fuel to compare the real world vs their calculations vs their measurements

'$150,000 split between about a dozen people and companies doesn't sound like a big deal to me.'

Rather depends how much money they actually made with the scam doesn't it?

Re: Academics

'Right, they'll repatriate it so they can deliver another payoff to already fat shareholders, creating basically zero jobs.'

Who will, of course, 'do stuff' with the money.

A large proportion of people don't have a don't have a driveway

Yes, in the same way that the large number of families with children mean there is no market at all for two seat sports cars.

Just because it isn't the right set of features and compromises for you (or me) doesn't mean that it isn't suitable for enough of the market to be viable.

Re: More to the point; how fast would a sheep travel in a hyperloop ?

Not very, it would keep hitting all the spherical cows.

Re: it's already doing 17.46 km/hour

'When you're going that fast, doesn't time slow down or something. '

Which explains why the records were 45rpm on one side and 33 1/3 on the other.

RE: Anybody with a link to that list.

List in Google spreadsheet

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to make any adjustment for purchasing parity so the list is completely pointless - except as a cheap PR exercise to get their name mentioned.

Re: Design

'Though, Kees Cook doesn't exactly have a stellar record when it comes to kernel security work, so I'm sure this patch is crap for other reasons...'

'...explicit whitelisting...'

Yay, now we have a new attack vector. If I can make you think I'm someone trustworthy then you'll unlock your doors.

Re: OK, smartarse, what colour would you make it

I don't care, as long as I can stick it up my nose.

Um, car bomb? Yet, no "link to terrorism"? Yeah, sure.

I heard he was really offended by the VW emissions thing and that Passat had it coming.